Josh's Divrei Torah and Random Thoughts and Musings

Race Consciousness and the Census

2012-02-01T12:33:00.005-05:00

The Cincinnati Enquirer yesterday included an interesting article from the AP about race and the 2010 census forms. It turns out that people were quite unsatisfied by the list of four possible racial categories. Sometimes it was because the person was of mixed race, and other times it was because someone identified racially with a category that was not included. This included Hispanic and Middle Eastern or Arab people, as well as many others.

I noticed that Jews were mentioned nowhere on this list. A few years ago Eric Goldstein wrote an excellent book entitled The Price of Whiteness, in which he documents the history of American Jewry through the binary understanding of race in this country. Essentially, Goldstein demonstrates that Jews never fit comfortably in either category of black or white. He goes on to argue that Jews are assimilating more and more into white America, and thereby gaining acceptance but perhaps at the cost of their unique identity. The fact that Jews were not mentioned in this article (even though the Polish, for example, were) may be supportive of Goldstein's thesis.

I would be curious to find out how American Jews think about their racial identity today, as I am unaware of any polling or research on the subject. I know that I personally always feel uncomfortable checking the box "white." Though I know that I am white, and I assume that my whiteness has affected my life greatly and given me considerable privilege, my whiteness is quite peripheral when I reflect on my identity.

One important factor may be the issue of the racialization of Judaism by antisemites. I imagine that when most Jews here the idea that Judaism is a race, they immediately think back to the Shoah, when the Nazis racialized the Jews. Yet groups "racialize" themselves all the time. According to the article, many people want to check "Hispanic" or something similar on the form, despite the fact that different countries in Central and South America have distinctly different cultures and their own internal cultural understandings of race (complicated by the fact than in many of those countries, the majority of people have a mixture of white European, African, and indigenous blood).

I don't know if I have some profound point to make, but it does strike me that Jews are not part of this issue at all. Perhaps the story is evidence that race, a social construct, is changing faster than the census form can keep up with. If so, it may some day again become relevant to examine where Jews fit in the racial makeup of the United States.

Beshalach - בשלח

2012-01-30T22:16:00.001-05:00

I am in rabbinical school because my first career choice did not work out. I really wanted to be one of the gladiators on American Gladiators. I am not entirely sure why it didn’t work out. I can only suspect I was too muscular, and would have made the other gladiators self-conscious. Regardless, I think I can apply something of my first choice career to my second. In American Gladiators, the show finishes with an obstacle course called the Eliminator. Sometimes, at the end of the race, the contestants have to choose one of three possible doorways to run through to the finish line. The doorways are covered in paper, and behind one of them awaits a gladiator with a big foam pad, ready to mess them up. They, of course, are trying to choose the lane without the gladiator to finish the race faster. I always hoped for the big collision. Regardless, this is not so different from this week’s Torah portion.

In this week’s parshah, Beshalach, the Israelites are like the contestant on American gladiators, and can choose one of two routs: they could go the quick route, through the land of the Philistines, but they may be attacked there by the local inhabitants. That is the route that the gladiator is standing behind. Fortunately for the Israelites, they had a guide that the contestants on television did not have, and God takes the Israelites the long way, through the desert.

In our lives, too, we may have the choice between challenging someone head-on or working around our problems with them. It is not always easy to know which is preferable. Sometimes, avoiding conflict makes us evasive and prevents us from standing up for our principles. Other times, running into conflict makes us confrontational, aggressive, and unreasonable.

In the Torah, God fears going the confrontational route because it may cause the Israelites to be afraid and return to Egypt, to slavery. At times when we confront others, we return to our intellectual slavery. We become stubborn, resort to party lines and cheap shots. We close ourselves out from other opinions. Sometimes, when it is not a matter of great principle, we can get where we want to go by taking the long route. In a disagreement, we can do the research and the reflection needed to find a way around the problem. It might get us there faster, and unharmed.

It may have been more fun to watch the contestant collide with the gladiator, but in the end it was the contestant that avoided the confrontation that usually finished first. In our dealings with others, there are times when there is no other way to our destination that to deal with others head-on. But when it is not a matter of principle, sometimes the longer route gets us where we need to go faster.

Delivered 1/30/12 at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, OH.

Bo - בא

2012-01-30T22:14:00.001-05:00

In his book The Year of Living Biblically, the gag journalist A.J. Jacobs attempts so live for one year taking all of the Bible’s instructions as literally as possible. It is a great read. It is laugh out loud funny, yet it makes an interesting point as well. Jacobs is an assimilated Jew, he says that he is Jewish the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian, yet through a year of living this way he learns something about the relationship between one’s actions and thoughts. Through his project he was forced to do certain things, but performing these actions changed the way he thought about things.

In this week’s portion, Bo, we receive what some commentators have described as our first litany of laws. The modern commentator Nehama Liebowitz does an excellent job describing how this week’s parhah can make the same point as A.J. Jacobs’ book. She notes that according to Maimonides, we have twenty laws in this week’s portion having to do with the Pesach offering and things that we must do to remember Pesach. The author of the Sefer Hakhinukh, a 13^th century anonymous work which lists the commandments given in the Torah, asks why we need so many commandments. Would not one commandment to remember Pesach be sufficient? His answer is no, because “man is influenced by his actions and his intellectual and emotional life is conditioned by the things he does, good and bad.” Performing certain actions can change the way that we think and feel.

It seems to me that liberal Judaism has struggled with this concept. The tendency is to think about a mitzvah and then decide if it is something we want to do or not. Sometimes this decision is made quickly, other times with great consideration. The problem is that it may not be the way that Judaism is designed. We often believe that we should think first and act second, but there may be cases where we should do just the opposite.

Anyone who has played a sport, or perhaps danced or done some other similar activity surely has heard of muscle memory. The idea is that if you perform a simple action and pay careful attention to doing it right, your body will remember the action and do it correctly every time, even when you are not thinking about it. It may be that the same is true for our spiritual lives. If we can force ourselves to do certain things, to be conscious of the food that we eat by kashrut, or take the time to appreciate time by commemorating Shabbat, we may in fact train ourselves. We may find ourselves being more grateful, appreciative people, more compassionate to those who have less than us, if we allow our actions to inform our thoughts. If we force ourselves to come to synagogue even when we do not feel like it, we will internalize the words of the siddur so that they can be there for us when we most need them, in a time of crisis or difficulty. As we read this week about our ancestors’ freedom from Egypt, we can understand that the mitzvot were given to us as a free people. The laws may seem constricting, but they can also be freeing. They allow us to no longer be constricted by acting toward our own needs and desires, freeing us to think and care about others as well.

Delivered 1/27/12 at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

Politics and HUC

2011-12-16T08:24:00.005-05:00

Today I am quoted, along with my friend Josh Braha, in a wonderful article by Adam Chandler in Tablet Magazine about the political climate at HUC. I imagine that the article will not sit terribly well with some of my classmates, but I think that Adam raises some interesting points. I'm in the middle of finals, so I don't have time to write a terribly formal response. I do want to take a few minutes to discuss points that I agree and disagree with, and to ramble on about some of the themes of the article.

The reform movement is rife with contradictions, which I think that any liberal religious movement probably is. We are caught between our desire to be a "big tent," and to welcome anything ideologically and the fact that the "big tent" often attracts a certain demographic which quickly forms a majority and pushes dissenting opinion outside of that tent. I know that HUC has no policy to admit politically liberal students or hire liberal faculty, rather is just the demographic reality. And I am not sure that I agree with some of the conjectures by others quoted in the article that HUC is more left wing than the rest of the reform movement. It may be that this is true of the Los Angeles campus (I have not spent time there and could not possibly speculate), but it has been my experience that HUC is perhaps only marginally more left wing than many of the synagogues and other Reform institutions.

Chandler could have easily written this article not about political views, but about religious practice instead. Despite the fact that HUC tells me that I can practice any way I want, the kitchen at HUC in Cincinnati is not kosher. Things are not even kept strictly "kosher-style," as there have been class-sponsored lunches with both meat and dairy dishes being served together. When leading services at school, we are forced to lead one "uncomfortable" service, a kind of worship that is outside of our comfort zone in an effort to expand our comfort zone. I pointed out that for me, the synagogue at HUC is an uncomfortable experience every day.

Perhaps the most interesting topic presented is the debate about politically charged speech from the bimah, and about my quoted opposition to it and to the Religious Action Center (RAC), the lobbying arm of the Reform movement. As Chandler quoted me saying, it seems rare to me that you can take a political issue and have Judaism provide an unequivocal stance on the issue. It's not that Judaism has nothing to say, it's just that Judaism does not speak with one voice. We have a rich textual tradition which evolved over centuries and can be used to argue virtually any point on any topic. Even if we wanted to argue that the general trend of our texts, or that most of our tradition says one thing, it will often disagree with most people in the movement. I am strongly in favor of gay marriage, and believe that it is a moral imperative that we impart equal rights to gay Americans. I can't base this view in the text, though - to do so would be a distortion of it. I have to disagree with the text on that one. Some liberal rabbis are more than comfortable arguing against the text from the bimah. I am not. Maybe this is my strength, maybe it is a place for me to grow. I'm not sure yet.

Often this conversation leads people to argue with me that these are moral issues. In some cases, like gay marriage, they are right. In most cases, this is a misunderstanding of the role that morality plays in these debates. It's not that the debate about healthcare policy or collective bargaining rights is a moral issue. The outcome of these debates have moral consequences, but nobody is saying that they want people to get inadequate healthcare or that they don't want people to have benefits and reasonable salaries. Rather, the other side believes that there are better ways of getting to these outcomes. You may disagree, I often do, but it seems irresponsible to constantly label those who disagree with you as immoral. It is an easy way of avoiding the fact that often times, we want the same things, disagree on how to get them, and truly don't know ahead of time who is right.

Many, in the comments in the article and in my interactions, have raised the notion of the Reform movement's great history in standing up for civil rights in the 1960's. This is difficult for me. I am proud of those rabbis who stood up to injustice and discrimination. But what is my generations' civil rights issue? What is the moral outrage of this generation? I know that I myself am unable to answer this question, and it seems that my generation as a whole is not doing too well at answering it either. My best guess is that my generations' moral issue is LGBT rights, but this is problematic for religious leaders for the reasons I stated above.

What I love about the Reform movement is that it allows to me struggle with many of these issues. What frustrates me is that it seems there are many student's who do not struggle with these issues. The irony is that I don't disagree with my classmates on all that much. I do disagree with their thought process and the way they present their opinions. I disagree that as a rabbi you can spew your political beliefs with no regard for what tradition or Torah says about it. You can do that as a citizen, as an American or whatever, but not as a rabbi.

This is a great debate, and there are a lot of difficult issues involved. Perhaps I'll figure some of them out one day. In the meantime, it's almost Shabbat, so Shabbat Shalom.

Vayishlach - וישלח

2011-12-04T22:48:00.001-05:00

In this week’s parshah, we have an interesting and somewhat unique interaction. Parshat Vayetzeh tells the story of Jacob’s journey to Haran, his dealings with his uncle Laban, his marriages to Leah and Rachel, and finally his “escape” from Laban. Jacob’s tumultuous dealings with his uncle end with a treaty. The separation between Jacob’s newly formed klan and Laban’s family is established with a marker – a standing stone which is given two names. Laban refers to it in Aramaic as Y’gar Shahadutah while Jacob refers to it in Hebrew as Gal Ed. These words seem to have the same meaning, yet it is quite uncommon in the Torah to refer to something in two different languages. In fact, much of the Torah is fairly unconscious of language in general. The term “Hebrew” in reference to the language does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. So why here do we have a marker named in two languages?

The standing stone is the physical marker between two distinct peoples: that of Jacob and that of Laban. Yet I am indebted to my teacher, Dr. David Aaron, for pointing out that its name is the linguistic marker between these two peoples. The use of two languages reminds us that we now have two peoples. One people is Laban’s, one is Jacob’s, and they are separated both geographically and linguistically. In today’s multicultural world, we don’t have so many physical markers dividing peoples. In the United States, we can live in a neighborhood that is richly diverse, where people of many different cultures live side by side without physical markers separating them. Yet we still have other kinds of markers, and we struggle to make sense of them. Should immigrants be required to learn English? This is a question regarding the linguistic barrier that can exist in immigrant communities. Some view this barrier as harmful, others disagree.

The linguistic barrier that separated Jews from our American neighbors disappeared by the second or third generation in most families. At this point, American Jews speak the same language as our American neighbors. Yet there are still markers that set us apart, and perhaps the biggest one is coming up in a few weeks. Christmas may be that most definite marker that separates Jews from their Christian American neighbors.

Now personally, I love Christmas. I love the music, I love the lights, and I love going to my friend John’s house and eating all of the Christmas candy that his mom puts out. Still, though, Christmas can make us feel left out. Professor Jonathan Sarna, probably the leading scholar on the history of American Judaism, writes that “Christmas . . . annually reminds American Jews just how far apart they stand from central aspects of contemporary American culture.”[1] Yet it all depends how we look at these markers that divide cultures. Each marker can be seen as either good or bad, and Christmas is no different.

While Christmas may define Jews as not part of the American Christian mainstream, it also helps us to define who we are. Too often do we find ourselves trying to compete with Christmas. We insist that people use generic greetings like, “Happy Holidays,” or “Season’s greetings.” We are fine with the display of Christmas decorations, as long as a token dreidel or blue star of David is included as well. But when we do these things, we may be missing the greater point. Maybe instead of demanding that we be included in this time of year, we should demand that we be excluded. If we want to fight assimilation, we should not try to assimilate our traditions into a universal “holiday season” that always magically comes around Christmas time. If we want our children to feel that being Jewish is something special, is something that makes them different, then they should feel different on December 25.

A number of years ago, a television program popularized the term “Christmakkah,” a combination of Christmas and Hanukkah. Lately, I have been hearing that term and others like it more and more. Perhaps we should take a lesson here from Jacob. He never tried to combine his word for that marker with Laban’s Aramaic term. Rather he said that I have a language and you have a language. We need not try to hide the fact that we as Jews are different. We can celebrate it. Our Christian friends and neighbors have their holidays, symbols, and music, and we have ours. They are not in competition with one another. We don’t need to wish anyone a merry Chistmahannukwanzukah, even if we can pronounce it. We can wish our friends a merry Christmas, and in a few weeks we can wish each other a chag sameach and today, a Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Sarna, Jonathan. American Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. p. 371.

Delivered Friday, Dec. 2 at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

The American Reaction to Freeing of Gilad Shalit

2011-10-19T11:50:00.000-04:00

On Yom Kippur, I spoke from the Bimah at my student congregation about the relationship between American Jews and the state of Israel. In front of many who disagreed with me, I criticized the mindset of American Jews who are critical of Israeli policies. Just a few days afterward, it became clear that the administration of Benjamin Netenyahu had reached an agreement with Hamas to free the imprisoned soldier Gilad Shalit. Before the details of this deal were made public, the Jewish community in the United States was bursting with joy. Yet in the past few days, the public debate about the Shalit deal has reached the United States. Suddenly, American Jews are asking each other, “Is it worth it to free one thousand Palestinian prisoners in order to save one soldier?” Here is a phenomenally interesting abstract moral question. But to Israeli citizens, it is not abstract at all. On one side of the debate, there are the bereaved families whose loved ones were murdered by the prisoners who can now walk free because of this deal. On the other side is the Shalit family and all of those that argue that despite the high cost, we are obligated to save a person who has sat imprisoned for over five years.

This matter is terribly difficult because it is possible to understand the perspectives of both sides. On one side, no one would want to free the murderer of their son or daughter. Additionally, we know that in similar deals in history the prisoners returned to violent action against Israel after they were freed. Yet on the other side, nothing will return the loved ones of the bereaved families. Also, there seems to be no lack of terrorists or man power among Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and therefore an additional one thousand people will not make a great deal of difference. Yet the problem with the American reaction lies within these opinions, which represent the two sides of the debate.

The American Jew is too distant from this argument, in terms of culture and morality. I personally lived in Israel for a year, and I have a brother who lives in Tel Aviv and served in the IDF. I speak Hebrew, and read Israeli newspapers every day. I studied Israeli culture and society as an undergraduate and in graduate school. Yet despite this, I do not have a deep enough understanding of the function of this kind of bereavement in Israeli culture. I also do not have a complete understanding of the role of the military in this society because I never served in it and I am not a member of this society. Therefore, it is all the more true that the typical American Jew cannot understand the nuances of this discussion. We are watching it from the outside, and I am not just speaking geographically. Additionally, the ramifications of this deal do not influence us American Jews the way that they influence Israelis. We do not know the future danger caused by this deal, but I can be sure that it is not dangerous for me. As a result, I should have nothing to say about it.

I once spent a weekend in Benyamina, a town in the north of Israel. I stayed with a family who had a seventeen year old son. When I was talking to his mother about this dilemma of freeing Shalit, she said something that has remained with me. She told me that she could not send her son to an army without knowing that it would do everything it could to protect him, that if he were abducted, they would do everything possible to free him. In the United States, we are not in her situation. We want justice, but the correct answer here his terribly unclear.

I cannot begin to imagine the feelings of those families that watched their sons’ and daughters’ murderers return home to their parents. I also cannot begin to imagine the pain of the Shalit family. Yet I know that there is pain on both sides. I know that all of the bereaved parents are searching for justice for their children. I also know that Noam and Aviva Shalit are doing the same thing for their living child. There is no good solution to this problem. It is also not our decision to make. Our job is to not to think about this as a fascinating moral quandary, and it is not to convince the Israelis what to do. Our job as Jews – as human beings – is to celebrate the return of Gilad Shalit, and to mourn the freeing of terrorists and murderers. Period.

עסקת שליט מנקודת המבט האמריקאי

2011-10-19T01:40:00.001-04:00

ביום כיפור, דיברתי מהבמה של בית הכנסת שבו אני עובד על היחס בין יהודים אמריקאיים לבין מדינת ישראל. מול התנגדות חריפה, ביקרתי את התפיסה של יהודים אמריקאיים שמבקרים בהחלטות ממשלתיות של מדינת ישראל. ימים אחדים לאחר הנאום שלי, שמענו שהממשלה של בנימין נתניהו הגיעה להסכם עם החמאס לשחרר את החייל החתוף גלעד שליט. טרם הפירום של הפרטים של עסקה זו, הקהילה היהודית בארה"ב התפצץ בשמחה. אבל בימים האחרונות, הדיון על עסקת שליט הגיעה לארה"ב. פאתום, יהודים אמריקאיים שואלים אחד את השני, "האם כדאי לשחרר מעל 1,000 אסירים פלסטינים כדי להציל חייל אחד?" הנה שאלה מוסרית אבסטרקטית נורא מעניינת. אבל לאזרחים ישראלים, אינה אבסארקטית. בצד אחד של הדיון, יש המשפחות השכולות, שיקריהם נרצחו על ידי האסירים שילכו חופשי בגלל העסקה הזאת. בצד אחר, יש משפחת שליט וכל אחד שאומר שלמרות המחיר הגבוה, אנו חייבים להציל בן אדם שנשאר בשבי מעל חמש שנים.

הענין הזה נורא קשה משום שאפשר להבין את התפיסות של שני הצדדים. מצד אחד, אף אחד לא רוצה לשחרר את מי שרצח את הבן או בת שלהם. בנוסף לכך, אנחנו יודעים שבעסקים דומים בהסטוריה, האסירים חזרו לאלימות נגד ישראל אחרי שהם נשחררו. מצד שני, שום דבר לא יחזיר את היקרים של המשפחות השכולות. ואין לחמאס ואירגוני טררור שום חוסר של אנשים או טררוריסטים, ולכן עוד אלף אנשים לא כל כך משנה. אבל בתוך הדעות האלה, של שני הצדדים, בתוכם מופיעה הבעיה שלי עם תגובה האמריקיית.
היהודי האמריקאיי הוא מדי רחוק מהוויקוח הזה באופן תרבותי ובאופן מוסרי. גרתי שנה אחת בארץ, יש לי אח שגר בתל אביב ושירת בצה"ל. אני דובר עברית, קורא עיתונים ישראליים בכל יום, ולמדתי על התרבות הישראלית באוניברסיטה וגם בתאר שני. למרות כל זאת, אני לא מספיק מבין את התפקיד של השכול בתרבות זו. אני גם לא מבין היטיב את התפקיד של הצבא, משום שאני לא שירתי בצבא ואני לא חלק מהחברב הישראלית. לכן, כל וחומר שהיהודי האמריקאיי הטיפוסי לא יכול להבין את הפרטים של הדיון הזה. אנחנו צופים את הדיון מבחוץ, ולא רק באופן ג'יוגרפי. ועוד יותר, התוצאות של העסקה הזאת לא משפיעים עלינו כמו שהם משפיעים על החברה הישראלית. הסכנה שלעתיד של העסקה אינה ידועה. אבל בטח אין סכנה בשבילי. לכן, אין לי מה להגיד על זה.

פעם הייתי בשבתון בבנימינה, וישנתי אצל משפחה שבה היה בן שהיה בן 17. כשדיברתי עם אימו על הדילמה הזאת של עסקה לשחרר את שליט, היא אמרה משהו שעדיין נשאר איתי. היא אמרה שהיא לא יכולה לשלוח את הבן שלה לצבא אם היא לא יודעת שהם היו עושים את הכל להגן עליו, שאילו הוא היה בשבי, הם היו עושים כל שאפשר לשחרר אותו. אנחנו בארה"ב לא במקום שלה. אנחהו רוצים צדק, אבל התשובה הנכונה פה אינה ברורה.

אני לא יכול לדמיין את ההרגשות של המשפחות שראו את הרוצחים של בניהם ובנותיהם חוזרים להוריהם. אני גם לא יכול להבין את הכאב של משפחת שליט. אבל אני יודע שיש כאב בשני הצדדים. אני יודע שכל ההורים השכולים מחפשים צדק לילדיהם. אני גם יודע שנועם ואביבה שליט עושים אותו הדבר. לבעיה הזאת אין פתרון טוב. אבל זה גם לא ההחלטה שלנו. התפקיד שלנו הוא לא לחשוב על זה כתרגיל מוסרית מעניינת, ולא לשכנע את החברה הישראלית. התפקיד שלנו כיהודים – כבני אדם – הוא לחגוג על חזרת גלעד שליט, ולהתאבל על השחרור של המון רוצחים וטרוריסטים. נקודה.

YK Morning 5772

2011-10-12T09:41:00.002-04:00

Two years ago, Peter Beinhart made waves with his article in the New York Review of Books, where he argued that the Zionist establishment had alienated my generation of Jews. This past year, Daniel Gordis made fewer waves in his article which expressed concern over radical anti-Zionism among American liberal rabbinical students. There is talk of increased divisions among the Jewish community regarding Zionism. I have heard students at my school talk about how AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, is too powerful, using language reminiscent of the way antisemites referred to the Jews running the government during the Roosevelt Administration. I know that many of my classmates and I have been warned by well-meaning congregants and colleagues to be careful speaking about Israel, as it can be a controversial issue in many congregations. I understand these people’s concern, as I just listed some of the controversy regarding Israel in the past two years. I know, too, that they mean that within the context of Israel, the peace process (or lack thereof), and the middle east, there are many controversial issues. Yet I feel the need to say that although this is true, Israel itself is not controversial.
The public debate among the Jewish community regarding Israel is either the realization of one of my greatest fears, or possibly the slow realization of my great hope. My fear is that Israel itself truly has become a controversial topic among American Jews. I fear that Beinart is right, that my generation does not feel a commitment to Israel and will grow to be uninterested in supporting the Jewish state. I fear that we have internalized antisemitic notions of the reaches of Jewish power, that Jewish concern over the influence of groups like AIPAC is a sequel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but this time written, edited, and distributed by Jews themselves. I fear that we will turn out a generation of Jewish leaders hostile to the Jewish state, who will in turn influence even more generations of Jews to reject the notions of Jewish nationhood, to reject the Jews’ place in the family of nations. I fear all of this because an apathetic or anti-Israel Jewish community in the United States it is bad for Israel and it is bad for the Jews of the Diaspora. It is bad because Israel needs our support, politically, economically, and emotionally. It is also bad because Israel’s accomplishments and shortcomings teach us something about who we are as Jews, and they force us to decide who we want to be as Jews. Israel forces us to realize that Jews can write history, and need not be the victims of it.
But perhaps these fears are unfounded. Perhaps what I am hearing is my great hope, of a more nuanced and enlightened discussion about Israel among the Jews of the United States. Perhaps what I am hearing is a wide arrange of emotional responses because Israel is a point of emotional significance for all Jews. Perhaps I am hearing is a discussion, a realization that Israel can be a great experiment for what Jews as a nation can realized when they control their own security, economy, and destiny. This may be the case. But I remain cautiously pessimistic, and here is why.
For my hope to be realized and my fear to be avoided, the Jewish community needs to establish some parameters and ground rules for our debate. Certain statements need to be labeled outside of the limit of what is acceptable speech and argument. When we hear Jews question the legitimacy of the state of Israel, we must agree that this is unacceptable. Israel is a state, it is over sixty years old, and nothing constructive can be gained by questioning its right to exist. This should be an obvious statement, yet I worry sometimes that it is not as obvious to some as it should be.
The debate becomes more complex when we introduce the notion of criticizing Israel. When I listen to the discourse at school, much of it revolves around the notion that we can support Israel while we criticize it. Some go as far as to say that we should not support Israel “blindly,” and that to be a true friend means to criticize it at times. I have conflicted feelings about such statements. At one in the same time they are true, because of course we should not follow things blindly as a general rule. Israel is a democracy and should, therefore, welcome and encourage debate and criticism. But at the same time, the statements also wax defensive and at times overly cautious. It is as if we must make every statement about Israel while someone peers over our shoulders. Instead, we should be able to make bold statements in defense of Israel without having to soften or temper with such obvious statements about our ability to criticize. We may, on the other hand, need to temper or qualify our criticisms of Israel. We cannot ignore the fact that Israel has been uniquely singled out in the United Nations as well as by many organizations within the United States for all kinds of unfair criticisms. We must remember that when criticizing Israel, it is not difficult for criticisms to be misunderstood and lumped in with those of a more bigoted or antisemitic character.
Another ground rule that I would like to suggest is that we keep in mind that although Israel is the Jewish state and we are Jews, most of us are not Israelis. We may support Israeli causes but we do not pay taxes in Israel. We may have certain political beliefs but we do not vote in Israeli elections. As a result, certain statements should be avoided. Some of the most frustrating and insipid statements about Israel came during the debate about Operation Cast Lead. Some Jews on the right supported more intensive airstrikes, and often called for the use of ground troops. Some Jews on the left decried the operation as cruel or even criminal, and called for it to be stopped immediately. Though I think that the majority of Jews sat and watched in concern for the welfare of Israel, those on either extreme forgot two important things. First, it is not their child who is in Sderot, having to sleep in a bomb shelter because rockets keep falling near his or her house and school. Second, it is not their child who has to fly the plane over Gaza, or who would potentially have to run into battle. It is easy to make these kinds of criticisms from the comfort of our own homes here in the United States. It is equally cowardly.
The past few weeks and months have not been easy for Israel or her supporters. The terrorist attacks launched from the Sinai Peninsula have added new questions and concerns to how the events of the so-called “Arab Spring,” will affect Israel. The Iranian nuclear program continues. Mahmoud Abbas has petitioned for membership in the United Nations. And today marks 1,931 days that Gilead Shalit has been held in captivity. It has been difficult for me to discern what exactly my role as a student rabbi is in all of this. I have no more insight than anyone else who reads the newspapers and is familiar with the different issues. I believe, as Alan Dershowitz has argued, that the statute of limitations has run out on any biblical arguments regarding Israel, and so I refuse to ask what the Torah says about all of this. Yet even if I am not sure of what my role as a student rabbi is, I know what my role as a Jew is. It is to stand up for Israel when it is being held to a standard different from any other nation. It is to visit Israel when I can, to learn more about it and to volunteer my time to make it a better place. It is to rejoice in its accomplishments, such as this past week when yet another Israeli, the chemist Daniel Shechtman, wins a Nobel Prize.
I hope you will agree that these issues are not controversial. The contemporary state of Israel is a unique opportunity, unparalleled in all of Jewish history. Israel has the opportunity to build a previously unimaginable society, a combination of the best of Jewish ideals, values, and traditions combined with the best of modern politics, discourse, and technology. It can be a center or even the center of Jewish culture. It can breathe new life into our national language. It can be our assurance that anywhere Jews are oppressed they have a country to defend them and grant them refuge. We are some of the few Jews in all of history who have been able to enjoy the existence of an independent Jewish state. Controversy should never cause us to take this for granted.

Delivered Oct. 8, 2011 at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

Rosh HaShanah Morning 5772

2011-10-02T20:49:00.003-04:00

ונתנה תוקף קדשת היום, כי הוא נורא ואים, let us acclaim this day’s holiness, for it is awesome and terrifying. These are the words that begin one of the most famously beautiful and troubling portions of our High Holiday liturgy. This piyyut, known as Unetaneh Tokef, its opening words, embodies the themes and imagery of the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. If you are not familiar with the text, you can find it on page 240-243. When we read this poem, it is clear that today is yom din, the day of judgment. Each of us passes before God today, as the poem states, and God hands down the verdicts. Today God decides who will live and who will die, and how they will die. This grizzly litany of methods of punishment is what makes this poem so troubling. We sit here today, reflecting on the year past, a year that has seen many of the images invoked by the poem: war, hunger, earthquakes, and poverty. One of my classmates is reading this poem today in Joplin, MO, in a congregation where some members lost their homes and almost all of their worldly possessions this past year.
There is a long standing Jewish tradition to always end on a nehemtah, on a note of comfort. This is the reason that we never end an aliyah of Torah reading with a verse that mentions someone dying, or anything else that is deemed inappropriate. The Unetaneh Tokef has its nehemtah too. We end with the statement:

ותשובה, ותפילה, וצדקה מעבירין את רע הגזרה.

That repentance, prayer, and charity annul the severity of the decree.

This statement, in the reading of the poem, comes as a great surprise. The first part of the poem likens us to the sheep in God’s flock, that God inspects one by one. The second part lists all of these terribly calamities, emphasizing our helplessness next to the powerful forces of God and nature. Then suddenly, the power is restored to humanity. We have three defenses to present to God the judge on this day of judgment, and they are repentance, prayer, and charity. Please allow me a moment to treat each of these individually.
Teshuvah is the focus of the Yamim Noraim, and the first thing listed as having the ability to alter God’s judgment. The poem tells us that God’s decision is written on Rosh HaShanah, but not sealed until Yom Kippur. In the Talmud, we are taught that on Rosh HaShanah, God records our name in one of three books: the book of life, that we shall live and prosper this coming year; the book of death that we should be sentenced to death for our sins; and finally, the book whose decision depends on our actions between today and Yom Kippur. The idea is that if we perform the proper teshuvah these next ten days, we will be moved over into the book of life. And so we spend this time regretting our sins, confessing them, and asking forgiveness from each other and from God because doing teshuvah can change things, it can make a difference. Maimonides teaches that even someone who has been evil all of his life, if he does true teshuvah and changes his ways, should not be reminded of his past sins. Through teshuvah, we have tremendous power. We have the power to change, to transform ourselves into new people, better people.
The same holds true for tefilah, prayer. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls it the most intimate and transformative act of religious life. The act of teshuvah requires as part of the penitential process a prayer, a request for God’s forgiveness. This is something that Jews traditionally pray for throughout the year. In the blessings that make up the amidah, we have a petition for forgiveness. In the prayer rubric following the amidah, Tachanun, we symbolically fall on our faces before God, asking God to forgive and heal us because we are weak, because our souls are in anguish. The language and imagery of tachanun is used in the slichot service, where we ask God for forgiveness in advance of Rosh HaShanah. The penitential prayers in our tradition, whether at this season or throughout the year, humble us. They remind us that we all have flaws, that we are all too proud or arrogant at times, but also that we can be forgiven for these flaws, we can repent and atone for our arrogance. Praying for forgiveness is just one part of teshuvah. Afterward we must actually go and change our behavior. Yet the purpose of the prayer is to put us in a mental and spiritual state that facilitates a change in behavior. The purpose of these prayers is to remind us that יש דין ויש דיין, that there is justice and there is a Judge.
When at its best, prayer affects not just us, but others around us. We are required to be surrounded by nine other Jews in order to say kaddish. One weekday morning when I was living in Jerusalem, I went to the synagogue that I frequented during the week. It was a Masorti synagogue, Conservative, and there was a woman there who served as the hazzanit on Shabbat. Her father had passed away, and she was there to say kaddish, and when I walked into the room I was the tenth person. She later came and thanked me, in a moment that was unbelievably flattering and fulfilling. Yet all I had done was come to syanagogue. Apparently, sometimes the simple act of showing up at the synagogue to be there for someone who is coping with some sort of difficulty is enough to make a difference. In fact, helping others is at the heart of what prayer is in Judaism. The word “to pray” in Hebrew – להתפלל – originally meant to intercede on behalf of someone else. We maintain this tradition today when we say a מי שבירך לחולים, a prayer for the healing of the sick. When we say these prayers, they are not a magic formula for someone’s illness to be healed or their troubles to be gone. Yet we have the satisfaction of knowing that we did something, we prayed for this person. The person in need of healing knows that there is a community who put their wellbeing at the very top of their list of concerns, that among all the things they could approach God and beg for, their health made the list. Both in terms of its ability to transform ourselves, and its ability to affect others, prayer too holds a tremendous amount of power.
Our last means of severing God’s decree is through acts of tzedukkah. If teshuvah and tefilah were powerful tools, all the more so do we consider tzedukkah to be a powerful tool. In the Talmud, the rabbis teach us that tzedukkah can save from death. By giving money to charitable organizations, we can help to prevent famine and disease, and thus actually save lives through tzedukkah. The Unetaneh Tokef reminds us that we save our own lives through tzedukkah as well. One who does not give tzedukkah many not die a physical death, but will be out of touch with the world, will be cold and apathetic toward the suffering of others. On Rosh HaShanah, the Judge of the world sees that there is not justice in the world, and asks of each of us, “what have you done this past year to bring justice to the world?” Acts of tzedukkah have had profound impacts on the world, from wiping out entire diseases like polio to micro-finance organizations that help a person to help himself, and to give them a sense of self-worth. In today’s liberal Judaism, we tend to speak a lot about tikkun olam, a notion with roots in the Kabblah. Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world, is a notion that divinity has shattered, that shards of divinity are scattered throughout the world and it is our job to pick them up and reassemble them, in order to save the world. We often interpret this act of picking up these shards as tzedukkah, as giving justice to the poor or the oppressed. For contemporary Judaism to apply this notion to the kabbalistic idea of Tikkun Olam demonstrates our belief that our actions, and our efforts to help the less fortunate, these have cosmic effects.
I want to demonstrate that all of these three acts listed in the Unateneh Tokef – the acts of teshuvah, tefilah, and tzedukkah, all have this kind of cosmic effect. This poem and the Yamim Noraim in general remind us of how small and powerless we are compared to God. The Unetaneh Tokef goes as far to list some of the devastating and horrifying ways that God’s power is manifest in the world. This, as I mentioned earlier, can be terrifying and awful – another way of translating the poem’s opening line, ונתנה תוכף קדשת היום כי הוא נורא ואים. These acts of nature, the powers which control the world we inhabit, are truly awesome and terrifying. But we are not powerless. We have the ability to do teshuvah, to transform ourselves. We can pray together and create a community that supports and encourages one another. We can reach out and help one another is well. We read this poem each and every year, and we know that in the year ahead just like the year that past, there will be difficulties. There will be famine, poverty, war, and disaster. We cannot prevent all of it, but with these acts of teshuvah, tefilah, and tzedukkah, we can temper it. May 5772 be a year of reflection, support, and justice.

Delivered Sep. 29, 2011 at Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

A translation of the piyyut can be found here. I cannot vouch for the quality of the translation.

Rosh HaShanah Evening 5772

2011-10-02T20:47:00.000-04:00

This summer at camp, we played God. It made me very uncomfortable, it seemed that we were overstepping our bounds. No, we did not clone any campers or anything, but we changed our clocks. We created what was called “camp time,” and for a few weeks, 680 acres of Switzerland County, IN were on central daylight time, despite being located in the eastern time zone. The idea was a great one. The youngest campers had a 9:00 bed time, and it was still quite bright outside by that time, so we moved everything one hour. Yet it created quite the confusing headache for the staff, or at least for me. For example, I can’t change the time setting on my cell phone, which I used as my alarm clock. It took a solid five minutes every night for me to do the math and figure out what time I needed to set my alarm clock so that I would wake up at the right time. The first morning after the change, a coworker of mine put a sign on the flagpole where all of camp meets in the morning which read, “If you are reading this sign and there is no one else here, go back to bed for an hour and come back.” At one point, I needed to run to the store in town, which was only 20 minutes away but was in a different time zone. As you can see, despite the fact that few others struggled with this, it was all very confusing to me.
It really should not have been so confusing to me, though, because we often manipulate time. As Jews in the United States, our lives rotate around two years, the Jewish and the secular. Yet there are many other cycles of time that we engage with. If we are in school, on the faculty, or have children who are in school, we work according to the school year. People in business work according to fiscal years. These routines become very fixed, almost as if they are preordained. If you are an American and you have spent some time in Israel, or an Israeli who has spent some time in the States, you will know that even though in Hebrew יום ראשון means Sunday, יום ראשון and Sunday are not the same thing at all! When I would call home after school on those days, I would be confused why my father was not at work. It was the same day of the week in Wisconsin and in Israel, but because of the difference in culture, it was a weekday for me and a weekend for my parents.
These multiple, overlapping, and intertwining cycles of time are not something unique to the modern world. This existed even in antiquity. The opening of the Mishna’s masechet Rosh HaShanah begins with the statement that there is not one Rosh HaShanah, but actually four! The mishnah goes on to list them. The first of Nisan is the new year for kings and festivals; the first of Elul is the new year for the tithing of livestock; today, the first of Tishrei, is the new year for years, for the Shmitah year and for the Jubilee, as well as for planting trees and tithing vegetables; and Tu B’Shvat is the new year for the tithing of produce that grows on trees. Clearly, Jews have dealt with multiple cycles of time for a while.
As history has progressed, these cycles have gotten more complicated, not less. As an example, we can look at one of the periods of time within the Hebrew calendar, the time between Pesach and Shavuot, the period of the counting of the Omer. Since the medieval period, this has been a period of mourning, attributed to the myth that many of R. Akiva’s disciples died during this period. Yet within that period, we now have the three most significant modern Jewish holidays: Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance for the Holocaust; Yom HaZikaron, memorial day for Israeli soldiers and victims of terror, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli independence day. During this cycle, we re-enact the shivah period bookended by Yom Hashoah and Yom HaZikaron, but then we rejoice on Yom Ha’atzmaut. So do we go back to mourning because of the counting of the omer the next day? It is difficult to reconcile this cycle within a cycle.
We tend to speak about time in fiscal terms. We spend time, waste time, budget our time, find time, and so forth. Time is money, and this makes sense. After all, time is a limited resource, and therefore subject to all of the laws of a limited resource. We simply have a finite amount of time in the day, and we both individually and as a society determine how that time should be spent. This is not a trivial issue. One of the central demands of the labor movement, for which people gave their lives, was a shorter working day, so that a factory worker could have eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of sleep. I know that the limitations of time can be frustrating, say when I am trying to get a paper written before it is due, or when I am trying to write my High Holy Day sermons before I have to deliver them. Yet with any limited resource, its scarcity is what makes it valuable. There is nothing inherently valuable about a diamond, other than perhaps its beauty. Yet its scarcity is what makes it so valuable. The same is true with time.
A few things in my personal life have made me think of this even more lately. This past summer, a new generation of my family came into being. My older sister had her first child, my nephew Eytan, who is the first grandchild on either side of the family. I had never held a newborn before, but I imagine that most people in this room have and can identify with the amazing feeling that it is. All I could think was that this baby is one week old. One week! I have leftovers in my fridge considerably older than that! It is amazing to me that as I watch him grow, his age is measured in weeks and then eventually in months. Then just a few weeks ago, a very close family friend passed away, too young at the age of 58. He died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, during which he knew just how limited his time was. He too measured time in weeks and months. He ended up running out of time, not having enough to see his three sons get married.
Leading a Jewish life is an exercise in the appreciation of time. Our festivals are often referred to as moedim, appointed times. We celebrate not only the beginning of the new year, but the beginning of each month, and the beginning and end of each week. Shabbat is an exercise in the appreciation of time. Rabbi David Wolpe calls it “perhaps the premier Jewish ritual,” because it “forces one to pause” and “to sanctify time.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches that although six days a week we are concerned with the material world, with matters which exist in the realm of space, on Shabbat we are concerned with time. We even have a blessing that we say over a moment in time. Though I personally believe it is vastly overused in the Reform movement to the point of removing some of its significance, the shehekhiyanu is our opportunity to thank God for a moment in time, that God kept us alive and sustained us to reach this specific moment.
When I took a class in college on evolution, my teacher was a professor of geology. She told us that among the concepts we would have to master at the beginning of class was the concept of “deep time.” This is the notion that when studying evolution or geology, we cannot think of time the way we normally do. When you are dealing with a process as slow as the Colorado River carving out the Grand Canyon, you must try to wrap your head around millions and sometimes billions of years. Judaism requires us to do the exact opposite. On Shabbat, or on Rosh HaShanah, we try to wrap our heads around each moment. We try to appreciate each new day, each new week, and each new year.
When we take this approach and are conscious of the preciousness of time, we understand that this new year, 5772, is truly a gift. It is a gift that we must appreciate and be thankful for. It is also an opportunity. Whether it be by changing a camp’s time zone or by setting up our Google calendars, we all budget and manipulate time. This year, let us do so to spend more time with the ones we love and more time with those who need our help. This way we can create more moments that are worthy of their very own blessing.

Delivered Sep. 28 at Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

Nitavim-Vayelekh - נצבים-וילך

2011-09-26T20:33:00.002-04:00

I once was lost, but now I’m found. It is all thanks to a voice I heard, a voice not attached to any body. No, it wasn’t God. It was Safta Naomi – my GPS unit. You see, I have absolutely no sense of direction. I spent much of my early driving years dependent upon mapquest, the kindness of strangers, and dumb luck. But now, a little black box with a British accent tells me where to go. As much as I joke, that little box that sits, suction-cupped to my dashboard, really has revolutionized my life. My GPS is not good for just any kind of directions, though. She has her limitations. She can get me to synagogue, sure, but she can’t tell me what to do when I’m there.
The paths that we set upon on our religious journeys often require some kind of GPS, or at least a map or compass. We sing when returning the Torah to the ark:

דרכיה דרכי-נעם הכל-נתיבותיך שלום (משלי ג)

Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace (Prov. 3).

It is not always easy, though, to know which path is the one that is best for us. And to make things more difficult, we have to chart our religious journey upon multiple axes. As we turn left and right on our journeys in the secular world, we need to learn to turn up and down on our religious journeys. Sometimes, we don’t even know which direction to go.

Judaism seems to work in two possible directions, and in my opinion, it must work in both directions. The first direction is to elevate ourselves to a higher level. This takes its most extreme form in the Hasidic act of dvekut, cleaving to God. The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of modern Hasidism, describes the Hasid ascending during prayer to higher and higher levels of heikhalot, of palaces or sanctuaries. The goal is to attach oneself to God, at the very highest level. Any worldly thought or distraction, be it concerns about business or lusting after an attractive person, causes a person to come crashing down to this world, the lowest of these levels. This idea of Hasidism takes this notion to an extreme level, but we see less extreme examples of this all the time. When someone meditates, it is to some extent this same removal of their consciousness from the world around them. The same may even be true of listening to an extremely moving piece of music.

The great critic of this form of religiosity is Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. In his great work, Ish Halakhah (Halakhic Man), Soloveitchik teaches that the purpose of the mitzvot is to bring the transcendent world, which the Hasid is trying to rise up toward, down to this world. Our worldly affairs are not distractions from true religious achievement, but are rather intertwined with true religious achievement. Thus our business dealings are not a distraction from God if we deal with them in a Jewish way, as God wants us to do. According to Soloveitchik, our true religious work is done in this world.

Thus we have to contrasting views. One view requires us to ascend to a heavenly realm, and the other requires us to bring that heavenly realm down to our real world. It seems to me that at different times, we need to take each of these approaches. If we spend all of our time with our heads in the clouds, we ignore the real issues facing this world: hunger, poverty, suffering. Yet if we spend all of our time working to bring the divine down to this world we may become tired, frustrated, or cynical.
At first glance it may appear that this week’s parshah, Nitzavim-Veyelech, supports Soloveitchik’s view. God establishes a covenant with the Israelites, and then tells them that this mitzvah:

11 כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃12 לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑וא לֵאמֹ֗ר מִ֣י יַעֲלֶה־לָּ֤נוּ הַשָּׁמַ֙יְמָה֙ וְיִקָּחֶ֣הָ לָּ֔נוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵ֥נוּ אֹתָ֖הּ וְנַעֲשֶֽׂנָּה׃ (דברים ל)

“For this commandment that I have commanded you today, it is not too wonderful for you, nor is it far away. It is not in the heavens, that who could ascend for us to the heavens and take it of us, and relay it to us that we should do it?” (Deut. 30:11-12)

Before we say that the Torah here is siding with Soloveitchik, we must understand that the commentators do not agree what the word “mitzvah” here refers to. Some say it refers to the entire Torah, to all of God’s instructions. Others say that it refers to the proceeding verses, which talk about teshuvah, repentance. The Torah is not entirely clear here, but if at different times going different directions is helpful, it seems that the act of doing teshuvah is one which requires us to have our feet planted firmly on the ground. The Torah tells us about this mitzvah:

14 כִּֽי־קָר֥וֹב אֵלֶ֛יךָ הַדָּבָ֖ר מְאֹ֑ד בְּפִ֥יךָ וּבִֽלְבָבְךָ֖ לַעֲשֹׂתֽוֹ׃ (שם, שם)

“For this thing is very close to you, it is done with your mouth and your heart.” (Deut. 30:14)

The medieval commentator Ovada Sforno is one of those that understands this passage to be talking about teshuvah. He teaches that this is done with our hearts and our mouths because our hearts must recognize our sin, and our mouths must utter our confessions.

These last few days of Elul, we may want to concentrate on that teshuvah that must be done here in this world. We need to regret those things we did to hurt others in our hearts, and with our mouths offer our apologies and our forgiveness to one another. Then together on Yom Kippur can we rise together in prayer to ask forgiveness for those transgressions we have committed against God.

The High Holy Days are our opportunity each year to upgrade our spiritual GPS units, and to realign our compasses. In Hebrew, the word for compass – מצפֵּן comes from the same root as the word for conscience – מצפוּן. Soon both our compasses and consciences will be aligned for the year to come.

Delivered 9/23/11 at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

Re'ei 2011 - ראה 5771

2011-08-28T17:55:00.000-04:00

A famous Hasidic tale tells of a young man who decides that he is going to try and stump the greatest rabbi of those days, the Baal Shem Tov. The young man finds a butterfly and cups it in his hands. His plan is to approach the Baal Shem Tov and ask him, in his great wisdom, to tell whether the butterfly is dead or alive. If he guesses alive, the young man plans to crush the butterfly before opening his hands. If he guesses dead, the young man plans to release the butterfly. With the butterfly securely in hand, the young man approaches the rabbi and asks him to guess whether the butterfly in his hands is dead or alive. To his amazement, the Baal Shem Tov answers correctly: “The choice is in your hands.”

In this week’s parshah, God informs the Israelites that there is a choice in their hands as well:

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ (דברים פרק י"א, פסוק כ"ו)

Look! I have put before you today a blessing and a curse. (Deut. 11:26)

In this verse, the opening verse of parshat Re’ei, God tells the Israelites that they have been given instructions and clear consequences for not following them. The choice is in their hands. Yet nobody is being a smart-aleck here like the young man who tried to fool the Ba’al Shem Tov. Therefore the rabbis present a different story of what God is doing in the Midrash. Rabbi bar Kappara likens this to God telling a man:

“My candle is in your hand, and your candle is in my hand. My candle is the Torah, your candle is your soul. If you extinguish my candle, I will extinguish yours.” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 4:4)

Rabbi Shimon also provides a midrash on this verse. He says that it is like two people,

“one of whom owns a vineyard in the Galilee and the other who owns a vineyard in Judah. The one from the Galilee says to the one from Judah, ‘If you take care of my vineyard, I will take care of yours. But if you destroy mine, I will destroy yours.” (Ibid.)

Regardless of what analogy one uses, the message remains similar. God has asked the people to do certain things, and to act a certain way. If we act according to God’s will, God will reward us for our action. If we do not, God will punish us. The book of Deuteronomy is rife with this notion of שכר ועונש, of reward and punishment. Many other texts, both in Judaism and other faiths, also contain this notion. It is a notion that is terribly problematic, because we know of the theme of צדיק ורע לו, רשע וטוב לו, of the righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper.

Sometimes, though, both the choice of how to act and how much we suffer truly is in our hands. The Torah also tells us that the blessing that is spoken of will be given on Mt. Grizim and the curses will be given on Mt. Eival. Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of Modern Orthodoxy, tells us that we can learn something from the placement of these blessings and curses. Although Mt. Grizim and Mt. Eival are right next to each other, and thus experience identical climate and weather, Mt. Grizim is lush with vegetation and Mt. Eival is completely desolate. Just like two mountains can experience the same environment and react completely different to it, Rabbi Hirsch teaches that people do the exact same. While we cannot control the environment around us, the difficulties that have befallen us or the challenges that lie in our paths, we can control the way we react with them. We can have a good attitude, deal with the challenges as they come, and work towards our own prosperity like Mt. Grizim, or we can give up, grow cynical, or wallow in our own misery and end up desolate like Mt. Eival. The choice is in our hands.

This coming week marks the beginning of the month of Elul, the month leading up to the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days. Traditionally Elul is a month of heshbon hanefesh, of taking account of one’s soul before the High Holy Days. As we prepare for this difficult process of introspection, heightened self-awareness, and repentance, we must ask ourselves, how did I react to that which I was dealt this past year? How can I work toward my own emotional and spiritual prosperity, and how can I work towards the prosperity of those around me? These are some of the difficult questions that we all will be asking ourselves in the month ahead. Though this process is difficult and often painful, the consolation is that we are not powerless in this struggle. Often, the choice is in our hands.

Delivered 8/26/11 at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN.

שבת הגדול - Great Shabbat

2011-04-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

As we have been clearing our homes of chametz and stocking up on Matzoh, all eyes are on Passover which will begin when the sun sets on Monday. It is strange, then, that Acharei Mot, the Torah portion that we read this week, is not about the redemption from Egypt, but rather the detailed description of the Yom Kippur offering, and the story of the scapegoat – Azazzel – upon which the Israelites place all of their sins. In traditional Judaism, this is the Torah reading for Yom Kippur morning.

The Jewish calendar is, of course, a beautifully convoluted mess of cycles and festivals. The last time we have seen yunteif was way back at Sukkot. Our last holiday at all was Purim, and since just before Purim we have had a number of special shabbatot. For the past four weeks we have recognized the arbah parshiyot, the four special Shabbatot that lead us from the beginning of the month of Adar up to today, Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Shabbat, the Shabbat before Pesach. This Shabbat, we read a special haftarah from the book of Malachai which in and of itself includes much language about repentance or, more accurately, turning. It is immediately reminiscent of what is probably the most famous of the special Shabbatot, Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. “Shuvah” means, “return” or “repent,” and it is a term used several times in the portion read this Shabbat. At one point it reads,

18 וְשַׁבְתֶּם֙ וּרְאִיתֶ֔ם בֵּ֥ין צַדִּ֖יק לְרָשָׁ֑ע בֵּ֚ין עֹבֵ֣ד אֱלֹהִ֔ים לַאֲשֶׁ֖ר לֹ֥א עֲבָדֽוֹ (Mal 3:18 WTT)

“You shall return and decipher between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not serve him.”

This statement is made as the prophet warns of the coming day, the יום ה' הגדול והנורא, the great and terrible day of the Lord. It tells us to decipher between the righteous and the wicked, but it does not tell what to do with them. As I will attempt to demonstrate, our tradition offers us some conflicting advice when it comes to dealing with wicked people.

In the morning prayers, we ask God to distance us from a bad person or an evil fellow:

והרחיקינו מאדם רע ומחבר רע

This sentiment is an echo from a teaching in Pirkei Avot, which states:

ניתאי הארבלי אומר: הרחק משכן רע, ואל תתחבר לרשע... (אבות 1:7)

Nitai the Arbalite says: Distance yourself from a bad neighbor, and do not get close to a wicked person.

The tension comes in passages like the one in next week’s Torah portion, Kidoshim, which is in non-leap years joined together with this week’s portion, Acharei Mot. In parashat Kidoshim, we are told:

לֹא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא׃ (Lev 19:17 WTT)

Do not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely reprove your fellow, and you shall not bring sin upon him.

If we are supposed to distance ourselves from sinful people, then how is it that we can also rebuke our fellow who sins?
Perhaps this is a distinction between those who are totally wicked and those who simply make a mistake. Yet our tradition teaches us that everyone has a yetzer tov and a yetzer rah, a good inclination and an evil inclination. The result of this is that instead of turning our eyes from the people who do bad things; we have a responsibility to them.

The result of this understanding is that we must create a community in which we are not only responsible for ourselves, but one in which we are responsible for one another. Take, for example, the notion in Jewish law of the rodef and the nirdaf, the pursuer and the one being pursued. According to Jewish law, if someone sees a person chasing another person with the intent to kill them, the bystander should, if necessary, kill the person who is pursuing. We might think of this in terms of protecting the person who was being pursued. Yet Jewish law understands it in terms of protecting the pursuer. By killing the pursuer you have actually saved him or her from committing the ultimate crime, the taking of a life.

The case of the pursuer and the one being pursued is, of course, the most extreme instance. Yet often in life, we see those around us make mistakes. We are often timid to confront our friends about their morally questionable behavior for fear of appearing too judgmental. After all, who am I to judge another when I make plenty of mistakes myself? Yet the most moral society is the society in which we keep one another in line. Rebuking others does not have to be about judgment, but rather can be about love. Parents who rebuke their children do it out of love, and out of the responsibility to teach their child the difference between right and wrong. Friends who rebuke each other carefully also do it out of love, for they hold each other to a high moral standard.

In other religions, redemption or salvation refers to the individual. In Judaism, we have no notion of an individual redemption. Our redemption from Egypt was as a people, and we are taught that the Messianic age will only come when we have perfected the entire world, not just ourselves. This week, as we celebrate Pesach and our redemption as a people, we remember just what it means to be a people, and to share in a collective experience. It means we must occasionally look past ourselves to keep one another on the correct path.

Delivered Friday, April 15 at Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, LA.

Zionism and Rabbinical Students

2011-04-07T21:20:00.000-04:00

I wanted to post a response to an article that I saw recently by Daniel Gordis, the founding Dean of the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies which is one of the Conservative rabbinical seminaries. The article can be found on his blog and was also posted on the Jerusalem Post's website.

The article depicts a situation that I myself have been confronted with, which is the growth of anti-Zionism and apathy about Israel among rabbinical students. Though Dr. Gordis comes from a Conservative background, I can most easily relate to the same problem as it exists in the Reform movement. I am deeply troubled by this phenomenon, and I am interested in what is the correct response.

The root of the problem in the Reform movement does not seem to stem from the curriculum at HUC. I cannot speak about the Zeigler school which Dr. Gordis is talking about, but I can speak to my own experience. The Israel faculty is phenomenal, as you will know if you read my blog that I kept in Israel where I continually extolled the virtues of Dr. David Mendelsson, or Dave as we all call him. Dave has developed an Israel curriculum for first year rabbinic, cantorial, and education students that should be the envy of every Jewish educational institution in the world. It may sound like hyperbole, but ask any student that experienced his Israel Seminar and they will most likely agree. Yet regardless of this excellent program, a student who is bound and determined to reject the legitimacy of the state of Israel is going to remain hostile. The course is not designed to teach students why they should support Israel. Rather, it seeks to shape the conception of Israel that students bring into it into a more nuanced understanding. Students who come in hostile to Israel, then, are simply going to jump on every imperfection of the state as proof of its illegitimacy. Therefore the curriculum is no the problem, and so I do not think it is the solution either.

I am unsure what the solution is, but it seems that the solution at least in part rests on the shoulders of the rabbinical schools' admissions committees. These committees have no easy task, deciding who has the right talents and abilities to be molded into Jewish leaders. It is difficult, especially in the liberal Reform context, to give applicants any litmus tests. The very notion appears, at least prima facie, to be antithetical to our values as a movement. Yet if there was ever a place for a litmus test, this is it. I do not expect each student to love Israel in exactly the same way that I do, but I do expect that each student should thoroughly understand why the state of Israel needs to exist.

I worry that I am part of a generation of aspiring Jewish leaders who assume that every Jew in the world is raised in an upper-middle class home in the suburb of a liberal American city, going to Hebrew school and participating fully in the secular American culture around them. Someone raised in this environment, who is a full generation removed from the Shoah (Holocaust), perhaps can't see the need for a Jewish state. But if they still cannot comprehend it after learning about it growing up, it means their anti-Zionism comes not from a rational place, but from an emotional place. Perhaps they want to be more accepted by the leftist political circles of their gentile friends, or perhaps they were raised to be uncomfortable with the notion of Jews possessing power because of an internalization of classical antisemitic notions. Regardless, these qualities ought to deem them unqualified to be trained as Jewish leaders.

The Reform movement has lost any semblance of a spine. We have, in the words Michael Marmur, become increasingly self-referential. We tend to believe that reform Judaism is about doing what is "meaningful" to us. The result of this is that we stand for nothing. We are a movement so wrapped up in our own spiritual needs that we stand for nothing but self-interest. We ought to do not what is meaningful for us, but what is essential for our people. We ought to train rabbis to be defenders of the state of Israel, because that state is the only viable defender of those Jews in the world who need defending. Of course, we would have to look past ourselves in order to see that.

מצרע 5771 - Metzorah

2011-04-07T21:17:00.002-04:00

I have simply had enough of it. Because of the leap year, the parshiyot of Tazriah and Metzorah have been separated, which means two full weeks of people talking incessantly about infections, scales, puss, and all sorts of gross things that nobody wants to hear about. So let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we? How about menstruation?

This week’s parshah, Metzorah, provides us with the laws of nidah, a woman’s impurity during menstruation. I am a bit hesitant to discuss nidah not only because I have, as some of you may know, remarkably little personal experience with menstruating, but also because I am fearful of joining a long tradition of men commenting about laws of menstruation that were originally written by men. We men have not been terribly successful at avoiding overt sexism in this process, either. In the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezar tells us:

כל עדה שיש בה חנופה - מאוסה כנדה (ב. סוטא 42א)

Every congregation that is given to flattery is as repulsive as a menstruating woman. (B. Sota 42A)

With that kind of track record, I am going to tread lightly when putting forth my own interpretation of the laws of nidah. I do believe, though, that an interpretation is necessary. Liberal Judaism is at its best when we can take a difficult issue, like nidah, and reframe it to something significant and relevant for our own time and place. It is at its worst, however, when we simply put our fingers in our ears and pretend that the problematic elements of our tradition don’t exist.

Many people are trying to reinterpret nidah. In her book, The Value of Menstruation: Positve Meanings of the Female Lived-Body Experience, the Israeli female writer Sarit Gayle Moas calls for such a reinterpretation of nidah, and suggests that this reinterpretation stem from nidah as a distinct time for continual spiritual rebirth, a time for women to recognize and celebrate their womanhood each month. Secular women in Israel have even taken on this idea and developed spa-style mikvaot which provide ritual immersion alongside massages, meditation, and all the other luxuries that spas offer.

I have a lot of questions for this matter. Should we reinterpret nidah? If so, how should we? And as a man, do I have a role in this process? I don’t have the answers and I am not sure it is my place to answer – but I think that we all should ask the questions.

Delivered 4/7/11 at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, OH.

שמיני 5771 - Shmini 2011

2011-03-29T14:58:00.002-04:00

The story is told of a rabbi who was walking home from synagogue one eveningand saw Mendel, a young Jewish man walking ahead of him. Mendel was pious, and learned in Torah, so the rabbi wanted to catch up to him in order to have some company on the walk. To his surprise, however, the pious young Mendel turned into a non-kosher restaurant. The rabbi walked up to the window to see what Mendel was doing. He saw the waiter come over and take Mendel’s order. Then he saw the waiter come back with a plate full of shrimp and pork, and to his shock he saw Mendel dig right in and eat the tref food. The rabbi couldn’t take it any longer, burst into the restaurant and exclaimed, “Mendel, what do you think you are doing?! Don’t you know that you are eating tref?!”

Mendel looked up and calmly asked the rabbi, “Did you see me come in here?”

The rabbi said, “Yes, I did.”

“Well, did you see me order this food?”

“Yes, I saw that too.”

Finally Mendel asked, “Well, did you see me eat it?”

The rabbi exclaimed, “Yes, yes I did see you eat it!”

So Mendel replied, “Then what is the problem? I did it under strict rabbinic supervision!”

This week’s Torah portion, Shmini, deals with the laws of kashrut – the do’s and don’ts of eating according to Jewish law. Now I have not forgotten where I am, and I understand the inherent difficulties of discussing kashrut here in the heart of Cajun country. This is a part of the world where it is most difficult to keep kosher, and it is a place where doing so may risk alienation from the larger community. Yet the reasons that keeping kosher here are difficult are the very same reasons that it is a topic worth discussing. Kashrut, and a spiritual elevation of the way we eat and sustain ourselves, is too significant a topic to be ignored in the face of cultural difficulty. It is not that I expect us all to immediately go home after services and kasher our kitchens. Rather, I hope that by examining the role of kashrut we might gain some appreciation for the consequences of what and how we eat.

Parshat Shmini provides a long and detailed account for what things in particular are forbidden to eat. This is often the source of many questions. Why does the Torah permit the eating of x while it forbids the eating of y? Many people erroneously teach that swine, for example, is unkosher because the ancient Israelites believed it to be unclean or unsanitary. This is, however, very unlikely because it confuses our contemporary understanding of the Torah’s words טמא and טהור as physically unclean and clean, rather than their more accurate meanings as ritually impure and pure. It is all too easy to dismiss kashrut as an antiquated fear of disease which is no longer relevant. This line of reasoning mistakes a spiritual matter for a physical one.

The same fallacy is made today by those who try to equate kosher eating with ethical eating. Influenced by the surging interest in sustainable agriculture, organic foods, and similar issues, this argument is also concerned with the physical harm done to our bodies by pesticides and preservatives as well as the physical harm being done to the environment. I am not dismissing these concerns and insignificant, but they are not the central concerns of kashrut because they, too, are physical concerns and kashrut is not a physical matter.

So why should someone consider keeping kosher? Why should we at the very least examine how we eat? There are many reasons, but allow me to share two of them. The first reason relates to identity, and may be the original reason for these laws in antiquity. Simply put, food and out eating habits are essential parts of our culture and identity. In a way, we truly are what we eat. By eating crawfish and king cake, one makes the statement that he or she is part of Louisiana and part of the Cajun culture. By keeping kosher, one makes a similar statement about being Jewish. These two identities are not mutually exclusive. The beauty of this community is that is stands as evidence that these one can be a proud participant in both Jewish and bayou culture, that one can be a proud LSU Tiger while being a proud Jew. Each individual can find a harmonization between participating in the non-Jewish culture around them while still eating in a way that is respectful of Jewish tradition.

The most significant reason for trying to incorporate some kind of kashrut into one’s life is the spiritual reason. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that the laws of kashrut in this weeks’ Torah portion comes right after the story of Nadav and Abihu, Aaron’s sons whom God kills after they offer a strange fire. Rabbi Hirsch notes that both the story of Nadav and Abihu as well as the laws of kashrut demonstrate a single law for all Jews. The sons of Aaron are not above being punished by God, nor are the priests given a separate list of dietary restrictions. Rabbi Hirsch notes that by keeping kosher we demonstrate that we are a ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש, a holy people and kingdom of priests. That is because everyone, from the high priest to the poorest beggar can elevate their eating to a holy level through kashrut. Just as we cannot offer just anything we want to God, we can also not put simply anything we want into our bodies. Judaism demands a life of discipline. Animals eat whatever is in front of them based on instincts, but humans are capable of a much loftier behavior. We can take our most basic, animalistic urge and sublimate it to something holy. In the words of Rabbi Harold Kushner, we can take something ordinary, like eating, and make it extraordinary.

It is important to eat healthy and be conscious of our food choices because of the effect food has on our bodies. These choices, however, also have an effect on our souls. Whether it is by saying a brachah, a blessing, before and after we eat or by choosing to adapt certain kosher practices, Judaism is concerned with the health of our souls. Through the choices we make each day, may our bodies be granted with health and our souls blessed with compassion and strength.

Delivered 3/26/11 at Congregation Gates of Prayer, New Iberia, LA.

בשלח

2011-01-16T00:22:00.001-05:00

I had the opportunity, while home in Wisconsin for a few weeks over winter break, to go back to Madison, the city where I went to college not so long ago. I missed it so much and I couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful it was there, and what a fool I was to ever leave. My mother tried to bring me back to earth and remind me of how I used to get so stressed during exams and how I had so much reading and work to do. She was right, yet I remember my time there as better than it actual was. I was happy when I was there, but not as happy as I seem to remember being.

I don’t think that my memories of college are unique at all. We as humans seem to have a propensity to remember things as better than they were, to idealize the past. That is why viewers all understood the joke in Seinfeld when George was always miserable when he was with his fiancé Susan, but each time they broke up he bemoaned how wonderful it was when they were together. It was both a classic example of us all wanting what we don’t have, as well as our unique ability to remember things in rosier terms.

Memory is central to Judaism and to Jewish identity. As a child in Hebrew school, I still recall being given yellow stickers with the number six million and the words, “Never forget.” In Jerusalem, there is an entire mountain – Mt. Herzl – dedicated to memory. It is home to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, as well as Israel’s main military cemetery, where many of the state’s great leaders are buried. This obsession with memory is much more ancient than these modern examples may indicate. It has been said that while the pagans had the gods of the sun and the stars, Israel had the God of history. In the Friday night Kiddush, we commemorate two understandings of Shabbat. Shabbat is זכרון למעשה בראשית and זכר ליציאת מצרים, the memory of the deeds of creation and the memory of the exodus from Egypt.

Today I focus on the latter of these two memories, the זכר ליציאת מצרים, remembering the Exodus from Egypt. This week’s parshah, בשלח, includes the story of the Exodus itself. It is the story we all know from sitting around the seder table, or from watching Charlton Heston on television, of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and Pharaoh changing his mind. Though Pharaoh had already sent the people away, he now realizes that this was a mistake and pursues them with his army. A story in the midrash provides a parable for this narrative:

“R. Levi told the parable of a man who had a field that contained a sprawling heap of barren rocks; he sold it for a trifle. The purchaser removed the heap and found running water underneath. He planted rows and rows of vines in the field, planted all kinds of spices in it, planted pomegranates in it – for all of these he put up stakes. He also built a tower in it, wherein he placed a keeper. Whoever passed by the field praised it. When the one who sold the field passed by and saw that it was full of all kinds of good things, he said: Woe is me that I gave up such a field! Woe is me that I let such a wonderful field out of my hand!

"Even so, Israel in Egypt were no more than a heap of barren rocks. But after they left Egypt, they became like a flourishing orchard of pomegranates. At whatever time people saw Israel, they praised them. When Pharaoh perceived them so transformed, he raised his voice in grief: Woe to that man – me – who let go of such a people."

The study of history is valuable because it affords us the ability to learn from past mistakes – or as the philosopher George Santayana famously put it, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With our tradition’s focus on remembering the past, what can we avoid? One thing we can learn is to be satisfied with what we have so that we do not only appreciate it once it is gone. Ben Zoma teaches in Pirkei Avot,

איזהו עשיר? השמח בחלקו – Who is wealthy? One who rejoices in his portion.

People have always romanticized the past and will always continue to. It seems to be a part of human nature. Yet with the lessons from the past and the lessons about how we view the past, perhaps we can also learn to romanticize the present.

Shabbat Shalom.

ויגש - Vayigash

2010-12-27T10:09:00.002-05:00

Posted a few weeks late, my d'var Torah on parshat Vayigash. When reading Torah at school we are assigned to deliver a mini "sermonette" of about a minute or two, which will explain the short length. Personally, I think all sermons should be this length.

In this week’s parshah, Joseph is a changed man. He reveals himself to his brothers with great humility and does not blame them for what they did to him. Yet they afraid at first, and he has to tell them, גשו נא אלי, come close to me. The medieval commentators are unsure of why he said this. Were his brothers’ so far away that they couldn’t recognize him? Rashi seems to think he was proving that it was truly Joseph by showing them that he is circumcised. This is unnecessary though, as Sforno points out that Joseph’s knowledge of being sold is sufficient proof of his identity. Radak, on the other hand, explains that Joseph wanted them to come close so that they would not be afraid. Herein lies a lesson for us. Some of us deal with congregants, friends, or relatives who hold on to a prejudicial fear of Muslims, Homosexuals, or other groups. All of us harbor our own prejudices, too. It may be against a group of people, or maybe against a set of ideas that are expressed in class. Instead of distancing ourselves and our congregations from these fears, let us deal like Joseph and come closer to those things that we fear in order to better understand and accept them.

Delivered 12/9/10 at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

Toldot

2010-11-07T15:05:00.000-05:00

It is impossible for me to think of the concept of the brotherhood of mankind without thinking of my father quoting George Will, who when told that all of mankind are brothers, famously quipped, “So were Cain and Abel.” As funny as I find Will’s response, it is not just a joke but does speak to what seems to be a fact of human nature. Just because people are related or share things in common does not mean they will get along. In fact, it often means just the opposite.

This line also reminds me of one of the aspects of Torah that I find most incredible. Amazingly, the text serves as a window to how little the human state has changed over the past few millennia. Just as we fight with our siblings today, so did our forefathers thousands of years ago. This week we read Parshat Toldot, the first part of the story of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau. When Rebecca is pregnant with the twins, the Torah tells us that they were fighting already while still inside of her: וַיִּתְרֹֽצֲצ֤וּ הַבָּנִים֙ בְּקִרְבָּ֔הּ . Of course we know that they never really learn to get along: first Jacob extorts Esau’s birthright from him, then he deceives his blind, elderly father and tricks him into giving Jacob the blessing that was reserved for his brother Esau.

Despite Jacob’s clearly unethical behavior, it is Esau who is viewed as the wicked twin in Jewish tradition. Almost any mention of Esau in rabbinic writings will be in a negative light. For example, the midrash claims that the reason Isaac was blind in the first place is because of witnessing Esau’s evil deeds (Gen. Rabbah 65:10). Similarly, while we refer to God as the God of our ancestors, god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we do not mention Esau. That is because Esau is said to be the father of another nation, the Edomites, a pagan people who died out long ago.

It is not surprising that Jewish tradition attempts to glorify the image of Jacob and demonize his brother Esau, because it is Jacobs’ sons that become the fathers of the twelve tribes, the progenitors of our people. Jacob in this sense is truly a patriarch, while Esau exists outside of our people. Yet the problems with Jacobs’ many misdeeds are part of a much larger problem in the Torah: the origins of our people are not always framed in such terms we can be proud of. For example, one of the fathers of the twelve tribes, Judah, sleeps with a prostitute only to discover that she is his daughter-in-law. His brother Joseph is pictured as selfish and self-centered. Their mothers Rachel and Leah are jealous of each other, and fight over their husband Jacob. I could go on for a long time listing all of the dysfunctional elements in our people’s history. Just as our people was dysfunctional then, it remains so today. I’m sure many of you know the old joke about the Jew stranded on the desert island. When he is finally discovered, the rescuers realize that he had built two synagogues. When they asked why, he says, “This is the shul I go to, and this is the one I’d never set foot in!” Clearly, there are and have always been Jewish groups that do not get along. In our own families we often have groups that do not get along. How many families have a relative who rarely comes to family functions because of a disagreement years ago, or because the family does not get along with his or her spouse?

What is important is that despite the intensity of the struggle between Jacob and Esau in this weeks’ portion, next week they will meet again. And just as we are prepared for a battle scene in which Esau will kill his brother Jacob as he swore to do, instead they embrace, and they weep.

The twins that Rebecca bore are as opposite as can be. Esau is aggressive and impulsive, while Jacob is more sensitive and passive. These two opposite forces and personalities struggled within Rebecca, as they struggle within all of us. Yet when Jacob and Esau meet next week, even the aggressive Esau will break down and cry because of his love for his brother. It is my hope that love, sensitivity, and compassion will always prevail for us, too.

Shabbat Shalom.

Delivered 11/5/2010 at Congregation Gates of Prayer, New Iberia, LA.

Parshat Lech-Lecha

2010-10-29T09:14:00.000-04:00

A few weeks late, but here is the d'var Torah I gave on my last visit to Louisiana:

Perhaps time really is money. It appears that one’s financial state may make a difference in how much time they have left, at least in a few specific cases. For example, a dying person in Australia in one specific week in 1979 may have lived a couple days longer than they would have any other time. That is because 1979 is the year that Australia abolished their estate tax, and strangely enough, a disproportionate number of people died immediately after the tax was abolished. Although if money is an incentive to make people live longer, it could be an incentive for people not to live as long. That is a hot topic these days, as our federal estate tax’s year-long holiday is set to expire at the end of this year. That means that if one dies on December 31 of this year, he would bequeath 55% more to his heir than if he died the next day. This could get interesting.
Yet the economic side of inheritance is nothing new. In ancient times, a man needed an heir in order to ensure the continuity of his lineage and the security of his female relatives. In this way, it was a very significant economic and social concern. Hence the frequency with which inheritance is mentioned in the Torah, with this week’s portion, Lech-Lecha being no exception. In parshat Lech-Lecha, God promises Avram a great reward. Yet that is not enough for him. He exclaims to God:

“הֵ֣ן לִ֔י לֹ֥א נָתַ֖תָּה זָ֑רַע וְהִנֵּ֥ה בֶן־בֵּיתִ֖י יוֹרֵ֥שׁ אֹתִֽי (Gen 15:3)”
Look, you have not given me a descendent, and now my servant will inherit from me.

Avram seems disinterested in receiving this great reward from God without an heir. Nachmonidies, a 13th century Spanish commentator often referred to as Ramban, comments on this idea, saying that Avram knew that there was no use in having such a great reward without an heir, for there is no need for material wealth in the world to come.

Of course God does guarantee Avram a son, who we will see in the coming weeks is Isaac. But God promises Avram not just an heir, but that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet Avram is appears a bit complacent in this passage. He asks God, “במה אדע?” How will I know? Yet another medieval commentator, the 16th century Italian Rabbi Ovadia Sforno, understands this as Avram worrying that his descendents may be sinful and not merit God’s great reward. Under this understanding, Avram is not being complacent, nor ungrateful. It is not that he does not appreciate God’s gift, it is that he appreciates it so much that he is concerned about its durability.

This seems to me a model of how we should think about our gifts that we receive from God. Our tradition teaches us that we receive many. Each day in the Hoda’ah prayer, the prayer of thanksgiving included in the Amidah, we thank God,

“על נסיך שבכל יום עמנו, ועל נפלאותיך וטובותיך שבכל עת, ערב ובקר וצהרים”

“For your miracles which are with us each day, and for your wonders and goodness at every time, evening, morning, and noon.”

To truly appreciate these gifts from God, these miracles and wonders of a healthy body, or financial security, or nutritious food, we must worry about their durability and future. Our gifts from God, the great reward that each of us has been given, must be bequeathed to future generations, and to those less fortunate than us. Jews are not buried in extravagant coffins with expensive floral decorations, because we understand that everyone is equal after death, in the world to come. Yet here in this world, there is inequality. There is poverty. Let us hope that all of us can be as grateful as Avram was in this weeks portion, and may God’s gifts endure and reach all who merit them.

Delivered October 15, 2010 at Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, LA

Yom Kippur Evening Sermon - Why Israel Does Care About Peace

2010-09-20T11:12:00.000-04:00

I am learning already in my second year of rabbinical school that sometimes you have to go out and find the sermon topics, and sometimes the sermon comes to you. I showed up at the airport on my way here knowing that I wanted to discuss Israel in one of my sermons, but not sure of the context. Then I had a vision, of a white star of David made of flowers on a blue background. Actually, it was not a vision, but rather the cover of last week’s Time magazine staring at me from the shelf of the airport newsstand. In the middle of this star of David was the absurd headline, which has even provoked a condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League. The title: “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” Thank you, Time magazine, for giving me the title of my sermon: “Why Israel Does Care About Peace.”

At the newsstand, I knew that this title would be something that would garner some attention, so I gulped and spent the $5 to buy a copy, slightly angry for giving this sort of high-school-newspaper level of journalism my monetary support. Yet as I read the article, my anger subsided. You see, though the title is the most visible part of the magazine and thus is going to make its negative impact, the article itself is not anti-Israel. Yet it fails to understand two distinctions, and without understanding these distinctions, one cannot possibly speak intelligently about the current situation in Israel. I am referring to the distinction between Israel and Israelis, and the distinction between the “peace process” and “peace.”

Israel is a state, and, more specifically, a parliamentary democracy with elected leaders who conduct the affairs of the state, both foreign and domestic, as the freely chosen representatives of the people. At any given time, they merely represent a plurality of those people. Israelis are those people. They elect the government, but they are not identical to the government. At any given time, many of them, even a majority, may disagree with the governments’ decisions and actions.

The other distinction is between peace and the peace process. When I say peace, I mean it in its most obvious sense: the opposite of war, a lack of violence. When I say the peace process, I refer to the negotiations going on now in Washington, between Prime Minister Netenyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, and mediated by President Obama and by the Quartet of the US, UN, EU, and Russia. I also assert that this process is a continuation of many earlier efforts, including the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Camp David Summit of 2000, and the Annapolis Conference of 2007.

The Time Magazine cover was not concerned with the question, “does Israel care about peace?” It was concerned with the question, “Do Israelis care about the ‘peace process,’” and their answer appears to be, “no.” I think the answer to both of these questions, “does Israel care about peace,” and “do Israelis care about the peace process.” Is yes. In fact, I think the answer to every possible formation of the question is yes. And I would like to spend a few minutes this evening discussing each formulation of this question.

The first formulation is, “Do Israelis care about peace?” This seems to be the most obvious answer to me. Israelis station guards in front of their stores and restaurants. They report suspicious objects on the street and are willing to clear the area while police robots close down an entire block in order to blow up what almost always ends up being an empty box, or a teenagers’ backpack that they lost. They buy their children cell phones at an early age so they can know that they are ok in case of a terrorist attack. Safety, security and peace all go hand in hand, and Israelis, like all enlightened people, hold these things as their highest of values.

A more interesting question is, “Do Israelis care about the peace process?” Yes, they all care about it. That does not mean that they all support it. This is the topic of the article in Time magazine. The article itself is a shorter version of an article that was written in Newsweek in early January, entitled “Who Needs Peace, Love, and Understanding, Anyway?” I will post both articles on my blog, the address of which is in the synagogue’s bulletin. The main idea presented in the article is that right now Israelis are enjoying security and economic prosperity, and have no reason to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians. The article in Time, written by Karl Vick, says:

“As three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still see their country as being defined by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away but Israelis say they have moved on.”

I think that this is, for the most part, true. The problem with the article, and especially its title, is that it confuses pessimism for apathy. Israelis are not, as the title implies, apathetic about the peace process. I defy you to find me an Israeli that is apathetic about anything. Rather, they are pessimistic. They have been burned by these negotiations before. The article understands this, too. Vick writes that, “Yasser Arafat turned down a striking package of Israeli concessions at Camp David. What came next was the second intifadeh, a watershed of terror for an Israeli majority who, watching and suffering waves of suicide bombings, saw no reason to keep hope alive.” That does not sound like apathy to me. That sounds like pessimism. That sounds like despair.

The next formulation of the question must is “Does Israel care about the Peace Process?” Well, Israel showed up. Not only did Israel show up, but they showed up almost a year earlier than Abu Mazzen did. On September 24 of last year, Prime Minister Netenyahu gave a speech at Bar Ilan University where he accepted the notion of a Palestinian State – the first time a leader of Likkud did so. He also stated on that day: “I appeal tonight to the leaders of the Arab countries and say: Let us meet. Let us talk about peace. Let us make peace. I am willing to meet at any time, at any place, in Damascus, in Riyadh, in Beirut, and in Jerusalem as well.” As Netenyahu reached out his hand, Abbu Mazzen found every possible excuse not to shake it. The main sticking point: settlement building in the West Bank. Well, Netenyahu put a freeze on it in November. This was not easy to do, and I know: I watched as thousands of demonstrators marched down King George Street in Jerusalem, setting up a stage next to the Prime Ministers’ residence, and protested against the freeze. Yet despite the fact that nothing was offered in return, Netenyahu enforced the settlement freeze and re-iterated time and time again his commitment to meeting with the Palestinians. It took from November until this month for Abbas to agree and sit down.

So does Israel care about peace? If by Israel we mean Israelis, its citizens, then the answer is yes. But they have been burned before, burned by naiveté and overzealousness on the part of well-meaning foreign leaders. If you mean the leadership of the country, we have seen how willing Netanyahu is to sit down with Abbas. Yet Abbas waited until the settlement freeze was weeks from expiration before he was willing to sit down, and now is threatening to end the negotiations without an extension. So with a Palestinian leader who is powerless in the Gaza Strip, who is holding a “get out of negotiations free” card in the form of the settlement freeze in his back pocket, and who recently said he would not accept Israel as a Jewish state, it seems to me that Time Magazine is asking the wrong question. The real question is, “Does Mahmud Abbas Want Peace?” Because I can tell you, Israel always has wanted peace, and Israel wants peace even now.

Delivered September 17, 2010 at Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, LA.

The article from Time Magazine can be found here.

The article from Newsweek can be found here.

Click here to read Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren's response in the LA Times, which I thank Rabbi David Cohen for bringing to my attention.

Rosh HaShanah Morning Sermon

2010-09-19T17:00:00.001-04:00

My teacher and mentor in college, Professor Gilead Morahg, told me a story about his uncle who lived on a kibbutz in Israel. This man was the quintessential kibbutznik, meaning he was devoutly secular. Yet he told Professor Morahg, when my professor was a teenager, that he actually loved the Jewish religion and Jewish tradition. He was this close, in fact, to growing out his beard, donning a black coat, and becoming completely orthodox. There was only one thing keeping him in this ultra-secular lifestyle. His son was killed in the Israeli War of Independence. He said to my professor, “I know what it is like to sacrifice a son. I could never believe in a god who would ask someone to do that.”

The story of Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac, is one of the texts we traditionally read during Rosh Hashanah. The story begins with the famous words, “והאלוהים ניסה את אברהם,” God put Abraham to the test. These words have garnered much attention from the medieval commentators because they seem to imply that God did not know what Abraham would do, which is impossible because God is omniscient. Although this notion could devolve into the ever-contradictory notions of divine foreknowledge and human free will, I am not horribly concerned with this problem because I am not convinced that this is what the opening of the narrative is presenting. Rather, I will take the view of Professor Gary Rendsburg from Rutgers University, who argues that the notion of a “test” should be understood as we understand it when we hear a test of the emergency broadcast system. Saying it is a “test,” tells us that there is no actual danger involved, that we know from the very beginning that the story will not end with Isaac being sacrificed. It is, he argues, the very first example and one of a precious few examples in the Torah of dramatic irony. The narrator reveals to the reader information that is not revealed to characters in the story. We know that this is a test, but Abraham does not.

In our lives, we are closer to the position of Abraham than we are to the reader, but we have a further disadvantage. In the story, Abraham at least knows what God expects from him. God speaks to him directly and tells him what to do in great detail, step by step. For us, not only do we not know if and when we are tested, but we do not even know the parameters of that test. I do not know if God tests. Truly, I am uncomfortable with the idea of a God that tests. So too were many of the Talmudic sages and rabbis of the middle ages, which is why they believed that Abraham was tested for us – that he passed the test so that we would not have to.

As a result, it is difficult to identify with the Akedah as a test. Yet there is something about the story that resonates so deeply within us, so deeply that it can affect our entire way of life as it did to my professor’s uncle. It is so significant that orthodox Jews recite the story each and every morning as part of their morning prayers, and we Reform Jews have moved it to the Torah reading for our one day of Rosh Hashanah. It seems to me that what resonates in this story is the notion of a direct dialogue with God where God asks something of us. We read this passage on Rosh Hashanah to ask ourselves, what did God ask of me this past year, and did I provide it? What will God ask of me this coming year?
God spoke directly to Abraham and asked him to do something specific. I imagine that most of us could say that God has never spoken directly to us and asked us to do something. But we can look for places to see what God wants from us. One place to look for that is within Judaism, our traditions, our customs, and our laws. Though we do not follow a strict orthodox adherence to Jewish law, the law does provide a clear idea of what God wants from us. We may not believe that these rules are divinely ordained, but we may believe that God wants us to struggle with our tradition, to learn and study our history. I think God wants us to become better people, because after all, we are partners with God in creation. Many of these laws can strengthen our character and make us more humble. Rosh Hashanah is the perfect time of year to examine different traditions and see how we might fit them into our lives.

The other place to look for what God wants from us this next year is those around us, our friends and our family. What do they need from us? More time at home, rather than at work? A bit more patience when things are not going right? Family relationships have no set time where we can remove ourselves from them and reflect upon what kind of parent, sibling, son or daughter we are. Rosh Hashanah presents us with the perfect opportunity. Like I said before, I can’t tell you for certain what God wants from us. But I imagine that God wants us to be supportive of one another, patient with each other, and to take care of each other.

I have always found it difficult to get a lot out of the High Holy Days. The synagogue service is too formal, too rigid, too structured. What I love about the High Holy Days, though, is the עשרת ימי תשובה, the Ten Days of Repentance that we get in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I think that going to synagogue is important because it carries on a long tradition of commemorating these days as a community, but it is not a sufficient High Holy Day experience.
I strongly suggest that we all make a conscious effort to do some serious reflection over the next ten days. My professor’s uncle is right: God asked Abraham to sacrifice too much. What is it that we have sacrificed this past year that we should not have? Time with our families? Long-term health and security for instant gratification? Yet at the very same time, what have we stubbornly refused to sacrifice without necessary consideration? What is it that we can sacrifice in the future to strengthen our character and are commitment to klal Yisrael, the Jewish people? Is it a matter of sacrificing some of the food we like in order to bring some element of kashrut into our homes and our lives? Could it be to sacrifice our time a bit more to come to synagogue more often? Forgoing that new TV in order to give a little bit more to those in need? Perhaps it is even a matter of fasting this Yom Kippur for those who have never done so before.

This process of reflection, called heshbon hanefesh in Hebrew, means taking account of our soul. Heshbon is the same word you would use in modern Hebrew to talk about a bank account, or the bill at a restaurant. Even more than your bank account, your soul’s heshbon is something terribly personal, and as a result, for many of us this process is very personal as well. If the impersonality of the synagogue service is what is difficult for me to enjoy in the High Holy Days, the act of personal reflection is what is helpful for me, and it is my hope that it can be significant for you all, too.

Remember the themes of the Akedah along the way. We can sacrifice too much, yet we sometimes do not sacrifice enough. Over the next ten days, let us try to balance the heshbon of our souls in order to find that balance in our lives.

כן יהי רצון

May it be God’s will.

Delivered September 9, 2010 at Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, LA.

Rosh Hashanah Evening Sermon

2010-09-19T16:57:00.000-04:00

Avinu Malkeinu is, for me, the High Holy Days. The music is so powerful and so personal that hearing the melody sweeps me back to the High Holy Days of my childhood. The text of this piyyut is also representative of the High Holy Days. Every major theme of this occasion seems to be represented. In the repetition of the word malkeinu, king, we are reminded of the theme of God’s sovereignty. Also present here are the themes of sin and vidui, confession. אבינו מלכינו חטאנו לפניך, we have sinned against You. Coupled with this is the expression of our humility and iniquity: אין בנו מעשים, rendered by our machzor as “we are of little merit.”

Yet another clearly evident theme in this piyyut is that of judgment. Avinu Malkeinu is recited before the open ark, where three Torah scrolls represent the three rabbinic judges that sit in judgment on the beit din, the rabbinic court. This time of year is our annual summons to this heavenly beit din. We are thrown in front of the court to confront our behavior over this past year, admit our shortcomings, and plead for mercy. This can be a painful, scarring experience. We all know people who have run from the religions of their childhood because the enormous burden this notion of divine judgment can be on a person.
The understanding of the fear and vulnerability involved in a true High Holy Day experience is nothing new. In Hebrew, these days are referred to as the Yamin Nora’im, which is usually translated as the Days of Awe. We are in awe, we are frightened. Noraim can also mean terrible or horrible, and the double meaning cannot be a mistake. From the very title of these days we are confronted with the danger and risk involved.

Throughout the year we recall this danger. According to the Shulchan Aruch, the great 16th century code of Jewish law, when one sees a friend that he or she has not encountered for a long time, it is appropriate to recite the Shehechiyanu. Yet when it has been twelve months since we have seen that person, meaning a Yom Kippur has fallen between now and when we last saw them, the bracha is strengthened to ברוך מחיה המתים, blessed is the Reviver of the dead. The Mishna Brura, an early 20th century commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, explains that we do this because if Yom Kippur has fallen since we last saw our friend, we know that he or she has undergone the judgment of Yom Kippur and that God has chosen for this person to live. In these texts, the judgment of Yom Kippur is truly a matter of life and death.

I find it easy to understand why this notion of divine punishment is problematic for many people. It is this idea of judgment which makes the Unitaneh Tokef, the iconic Rosh HaShanah piyyut which speaks of how many shall live and die, so very difficult. Although the text is scarring, it closes on a softer note. The text teaches that God is deciding who shall live and who shall die, and that God is choosing from a litany of different methods of death. Yet it closes by telling us that תשובה, תפילה, וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה, that repentance, prayer, and tzedukah can alter the divine decree. This last sentence may not be enough to make up for the greater part of the text. For some, this prayer is too theologically difficult, and they are uncomfortable reciting it. I am not entirely sure how I feel about this text, as I certainly have my philosophical and theological problems with it. Regardless of these problems, however, it seems that this last sentence at least recognizes the difficult nature of the poem. This is not the only example in our tradition of this recognition of the difficulty of the image of God as Judge.

If you would walk into a typical orthodox or conservative synagogue on a weekday morning or afternoon, you would notice a section in the liturgy which is missing in our Reform siddur. Called Tachanun, meaning supplication, it is the penitential part of the daily prayer, and it is filled with textual and thematic similarities to our High Holy Day liturgy. These prayers are often referred to as נפילת אפיים, or falling on ones face, for we rest our head on our forearm and position ourselves in a humble, vulnerable position when reciting this prayer. Yet we are taught that we should not fall on our face when we are not in the presence of the sefer Torah. Just as the Torah is a symbol of judgment on Rosh HaShanah, it can also be a symbol of protection.

Our tradition teaches us that the poem Avinu Malkeinu, and the High Holy Days as an extension of it, revolve around this dichotomy of God as judge and God as protector. We call God malkeinu, the all powerful monarch, yet we first and foremost call God Avinu, our loving, doting parent. Both of these images can be helpful. Sometimes it is helpful to think of God as melech, the ruler who will oversee the world and make sure that our portion in life is fair, even if the injustices are corrected after we are gone. Sometimes we simply need to know that God is Avinu, willing to help us and comfort us in our time of need. Too often when our friends are sick or going through times of difficulty, we hear our friends offer their theological explanations. It is all part of God’s plan, they may say, or that God is testing the person. A more fundamentalist-minded person may even suggest that the person is being punished for something. Often these explanations are offered out of kindness. These people are both trying to help their friend in need and justify the situation for themselves. I imagine that it helps some people, too. It can only help a person, though, if they agree.

I try not to offer theological explanations. I say this not out of laziness, but realism. I simply do not possess the epistemic faculties necessary to say anything intelligent about the nature of God. In case this makes me sound simple, I remind you that Maimonides believed that one should only make statements about God in the negative because we do not know enough about God to make statements in the positive. When a doctor is confronted with a sick patient, it is irresponsible for the doctor to explain the ailment or devise a treatment when he or she does not really have an idea what is going on. It is no different for the rabbi or friend of that sick person. It is irresponsible for us to explain away another’s suffering and couch our explanation as fact.

Because we do not know, perhaps we must go with what we feel. During hard times, if we need to think of God as a judge who keeps everything fair because that is what will get us through, then that is the right answer for us. If somebody else simply needs to see God as a loving parent, holding their hand through life’s difficulties, then that is the right answer for that person. I know that this community, and this part of the country, has faced unimaginable difficulties in the past few years. I was told before coming here that because I am speaking in Louisiana, I must talk about the oil spill. I did not know what to say about it, though, because who am I to come down here from way up north and tell you how to respond to the oil spill? What I can tell you is that this is a time when our tradition tries to balance these two extremes of God’s judgment and God’s compassion. I do not know what will happen to those responsible for the spill or what we should do about it. I can just hope and pray that there will be justice, and that God and we can respond compassionately. We must take care of each other, and ourselves, as we leave the difficulties and tribulations of the year 5770 behind us, and enter 5771 together.

Delivered September 8, 2010 at Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, LA.

Matot-Maseh

2010-07-13T14:34:00.000-04:00

In May, Peter Beinart’s article in the New York Review of Books, entitled The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment, caused quit the stir among my classmates at the Hebrew Union College. The article is a biting criticism of some major Jewish organizations, including AIPAC, the Anti-Defimation League, and even the Israeli government. Beinart accuses the Jewish establishment of creating the apathy that most young, non-orthodox Jews feel in regard to Israel. He believes that the establishment is out of touch with younger Jews, and that the rigidi conservatism of these organizations forces young Jews to choose between their liberal ideals and their Zionism. In his words, Beinart claims that “For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”
It seems clearly evident from different surveys and studies, many of which Beinart presents in his article, that this apathy in regard to Zionism exists in my generation of Jews. What these polls cannot clearly define, however, is the cause of this apathy. I have no quarrel with Beinart’s assertion that the Jewish establishment is out of touch with the Jewish masses, specifically the younger generations. What I as a young Jew do take issue with is Beinart’s inexplicable reluctance to criticize these younger Jews. It seems that one of this week’s parshah, Maseh, may illustrate the true roots of this problem.
The word מסעי is a form of the word מסע, meaning journey. The parshah opens by saying:

אֵלֶּה מַסְעֵי בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, אֲשֶׁר יָצְאוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם--לְצִבְאֹתָם: בְּיַד-מֹשֶׁה, וְאַהֲרֹן.

These are the journeys of the children of Israel who went out of the land of Egypt, to their hosts by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

The Torah then provides a long list of all the encampments during the Israelite’s forty years wandering through the desert, which goes on and on for 47 verses. The sheer length of this itinerary requires some explanation for the medieval biblical commentators, who believe that there are no superfluous words in the Torah. Most of them, most notably Rashi, seem to hold that the list provided in the Torah is included to teach of God’s compassion, because the list revealed that the Israelites were given ample time to rest during their journey through the desert. For me, however, the 16th century rabbi Ovadia Sforno provides an interesting alternative take. Drawing from the book of Yeremiahu, he argues that God provided this list in order to illustrate the Israelite’s merit for having wandered so much and for so long in barren lands, and that it is this merit which gives them the right to enter into the land of Israel. Sforno’s interpretation teaches us that it is only after an appreciation for the struggles of the Jews and a detailed account of their history can we understand their merit.

My criticism of Jews who are unconcerned with Israel and Zionism, especially those of my generation, is that they have not studied the modern version of this list of wanderings. They are ignorant of their own history, of the sufferings of those Jews who were expelled from Spain, incarcerated in the Soviet Union, raped and pillaged in the Pale of Settlement, cast out from Yemen, and starved in Ethiopia. These Jews are lucky enough to have grown up in a place and at a time unmatched in history for its acceptance of Jews. If a Jew’s idea of what it is to be Jewish is framed around the life of the average suburban, United States Jew, it seems clear why he or she would see no urgent need for a Jewish state.

I fundamentally agree with the claim made by one of my teachers at the Hebrew Union College, Dave Mendelsson, that it is impossible to understand Israel and Zionism without an understanding of Jewish history. A nuanced understanding of history dismisses the concerns that Beinart and many others have about the political nature of Jewish organizations. Regardless of political leanings and affiliations, any student of Jewish history understands the need for an independent Jewish state. We learn in this week’s parshah the value of recording and studying our past even when it is painful and difficult. I believe that studying the difficulties of our past can lead us into a brighter future.

Shabbat Shalom.

Delivered 7/9/10 at Congregation Sinai in Milwaukee, WI.

Beinart's article can be found here.

The Haaretz article can be found here.

סמלים ופסלים - Symbols and Idols הרמב"ם מספר סיפור על המקורות של פסלים ששובר את התמונה המסורתית של הנושא. הוא אומר שבניגוד לדעות של הרבה אנשים שחושבי

2010-06-02T09:35:00.000-04:00

This is a paper that I wrote for a class. Sorry to the non Hebrew readers that you won't be able to read it, but I'm far too lazy to translate it. Also, sorry to the Hebrew readers for my terrible Hebrew. For those who can't read it, I basically describe Maimonides' view on what's called strange worship, but understood as idol worship. He argues that the worshipers of idols were pious people but went on a slippery slope, from worshiping God to worshiping God's creations to worshiping man-made replicas of those creations. My argument is that he also illustrates the dangers of religious symbols, and that there is a fine line between a symbol and an idol. For example, does the Torah walk that fine line when we kiss it and parade it around the synagogue? I also wonder (but did not write) if idols in this case need to be physical objects, of if we can "idolize" ideologies as well.

I apologize if the formatting gets screwed up when it copies from Word to the blog format.

הרמב"ם מספר סיפור על המקורות של פסלים ששובר את התמונה המסורתית של הנושא. הוא אומר שבניגוד לדעות של הרבה אנשים שחושבים שעובדי פסלים ואלילים אינם אנשים טובים בכלל, אלה הם לגמרי רשעים. הרמב"ם אומר שיש להם מטרות טובות, והם רוצים להיות צדיקים, אבל הם פשוט איבדו את הדרך. הם התפללו לאל שברא כמה דברים, למשל השמש. מכוון שהשמש, היא עבודת היד של האל, הם ניסו להלל את האל דרך יצירתו. התהליך ממשיך כשהם בונים פסל של יצירתו של האל. המסר בסיפורו של הרמב"ם הוא ברור. עובדי אלילים, יש להם אותן מטרות שיש לצדיקים, אבל הם רחוקים מדי מהמרכז של העבודה שלהם. לפי הרמב"ם, עבודה זרה היא עבודה נבוכה.
הרעיונות האלה הם חשובים מאוד בקשר ליהדות בזמננו. הרמב"ם בעצם אומר שאנחנו יכולים להיות עובדי אלילים ובאותו זמן חושבים שאנחנו מתנהגים כיהודים טובים. נראה לי שזה לא רק אפשר, אלה המצב הזה מקיים בכמה מקומות ביהדות בת זמננו. עכשיו נראה לי שיש לכמה זרמים יהודיים סמלים שאולי הם בעצם פסלים. למשל, ה"צדיק" החסידי, או הרבי החסידי, הם יושבים ממש על הגבול שבין אנשים לבין אלילים. החסידים רוקדים מסביבם, חושבים שהם מושלמים ולפעמים שמישהו, כמו מנחם מנדל שנירסון, הוא המשיח. הם אפילו משנים את התפילה דרך השמטת התחנון בימי הולדת של הצדיקים. הפעולה הזאת מעלה את הימים האלה למעמד של החגים או ראשי חודש, שבהם לא אומרים תחנון. דרך הפעולות האלה, החסידים חוגגים את האנשים עצמם ולא החכמה שלהם או משהו לא גופני. לכן, נראה לי שהסמלים האלה הם קרובים לפסלים.
עוד דוגמה לכך, היא הדתיים הלאומיים ויחסם לארץ ישראל והאדמה. הארץ הזאת, היא חשובה להרבה יהודים, אבל היחס של הדתיים לאומיים בימין הקיצוני, הוא גם כן נראה כמו עבודה זרה. הם לוחמים נגד יהודיים אחרים כדי להגן על הארץ. הארץ היא יותר חשובה מכל דבר אחר, אפילו ערכים גבוהים כמו פיקוח נפש. הרעיון שהם מהגנים על הארץ משום שהיא קדושה, או כדי להביא את המשיח, הוא לא מספיק מסביר את הפעולות של הדתיים כאלה שלחמו לשמור על עזה, שאף פעם לא היה אדמה יהודית בזמן התנ"ך. הם לא לחמו בגלל המשיח או הקדושה, אלה בגלל האדמה עצמה, הדבר הגופני. אך האדמה הפכה להיות הפסל שלהם.
יש גם דוגמאות של סמלים ששייכים ליהדות כולה. הדוגמה הכי ברורה, היא הסמל של ספר התורה. לתורה, יש ארון גדול ו"קדוש," ויש את ההכפה. כשמישהו מוציא אותה מארון הקןדש, כולם חייבים לקום. אנשים רבים מנשקים אותה, ולפעמים במילים "גדלו לה' איאי" נראה שאנשים משתחווים לה. הסיבה לכך, היא פשוטה. האנשים האלה, הם לא עובדים את התורה, הם עושים את הדברים האלה כדי לכבד את המשמעות של התוכן של התורה. הסיבה הזאת, היא מפנימה את הדאגה של הרמב"ם. הבעיה היא שפה, זה קשה מדי להבדיל בין החפץ לבין הרעיון. הגופני יושב קרוב מדי לסמלי. אנחנו חושבים שאנחנו עובדים את אלוהים דרך הפעלות האלה, אבל גם עובדי הפסל של השמש חשבו ככה. לכן הדוגמה של התורה מראה את הרעיון של הרמב"ם. הוא דאג שסמלים יכולים להיות פסלים. סמלים עוזרים לנו להבין ו להרגיש, אבל יש להם את הכוח להסיח את תשומת הלב שלנו. הרמב"ם כותב על חפצים, והסכנה שלהם להפוך לפסלים. הסכנה הזאת עדיין חיה, וכדי לנו לזכור את זה בחיים שלנו.

בחקותי - Bekhukotai

2010-05-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is a d'var Torah that I gave at school earlier this month. Because it was given orally, I do not have any formal citations, but would happy to provide them if anyone is interested. I also have to give a hat tip to my professor David Levine for his help on the research, as well as my adviser Dean Naamah Kelman.

פשרשת בחקותי - Parshat Behukotai

Religious fundamentalists just love to play the blame game. Just a few weeks ago, a major Iranian cleric announced that the recent surge of earthquakes, such as that in Haiti and China, have been caused by women dressing immodestly. Many fundamentalist Christian leaders blamed Hurricane Katrina on New Orlean’s gay community. And just if you thought this is a non-Jewish phenomenon, I will remind you that the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, taught that the Holocaust was divine retribution for Zionism and Jews breaking the Talmudic oath not to rebel against the nations. He himself was a Holocaust survivor, and he was far from the only Jewish authority to put forth such a view.

What makes these perverse ideas even more gut-wrenching for reasonable Jews like ourselves is just how deeply this view is engrained in our tradition. Let us not forget that traditionally, the destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent exile was believed to be a punishment for the Israelites’ sins. The psalmist also holds this view of reward and punishment as well, as it is written:

כִּי-יוֹדֵעַיְהוָה, דֶּרֶךְ צַדִּיקִים; וְדֶרֶךְ רְשָׁעִים תֹּאבֵד. (Psalms 1:6)

"For HaShem knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall be destroyed." This is presented even more clearly in the troublesome passage we recite in Birkat HaMazon:

נער הייתי וגם זקנתי ולא ראיתי צדיק נעזב. I was young, now I’ve grown old, and I have not seen a righteous man in want.

And in one of this week's parashot this idea of שכר ועונש, reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, appears in its most clear and practical terms.

The first half of Parashat בחקותי is a long list of blessings and curses. The parshat opens with God telling the Israelites, “אִם-בְּחֻקֹּתַי, תֵּלֵכוּ; וְאֶת-מִצְו‍ֹתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ, וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם. "If you walk according to my laws, and observe my commandments and do them..." (Lev. 26:3), then you will receive all sorts of blessings such as plentiful rain and an abundance of food. These blessings go on for some 10 verses or so, until we get to verse 14, which says

וְאִם-לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ, לִי; וְלֹא תַעֲשׂוּ, אֵת כָּל-הַמִּצְו‍ֹת הָאֵלֶּה.

וְאִם-בְּחֻקֹּתַי תִּמְאָסוּ, וְאִם אֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי תִּגְעַל נַפְשְׁכֶם, לְבִלְתִּי עֲשׂוֹת אֶת-כָּל-מִצְו‍ֹתַי, לְהַפְרְכֶם אֶת-בְּרִיתִי.

"And if you do not hear me, and you do not perform all of these commandments, and if you abhor my laws, and if your souls are disgusted by my statues such that you do not perform all of my commandments and break my covenant . . . " (Lev. 26:14-15)

And then come all the curses, and there are a lot of them, to the tune of some 29 verses. There is smiting, flesh bighting, and any other awful thing one can imagine.

The blessings and curses of parshat Behukotai are, in a way, the way we would like to see the world, with the righteous receiving their reward and the wicked their punishment. The problem is that it just does not seem to be true. Each one of us knows wonderful people who have suffered immense pain in this world. So where do we turn when our empirical reality contradicts with the words of Torah? Let me suggest that we turn to ספר איוב (Book of Job).

According to my interpretation of ספר איוב, it is the ketuvim’s response to the difficulties presented in this week’s parshah. A quick refresher: the book of Job is comprised of poetry, surrounded by a “framing story” made up of an introduction and an epilogue. In the introduction, we learn that Job is an entirely righteous man, תָּם וְיָשָׁר וִירֵא אֱלֹהִים--וְסָר מֵרָע איש (Job 1:1). After meeting Job, the story continues with a conversation between God and the satan, some sort of divine adversary. The satan bets God that if he takes away all of Job’s good fortunes, Job will surely blaspheme God. God takes the satan up on the bet, and soon afterward kills all of Job’s livestock and his children. When Job does not curse God, God turns it over to the satan who inflicts Job with a painful disease. Job’s misfortune is explained to him by some of his friends, who present the same backward reasoning as those who blame hurricanes and earthquakes on human behavior. They tell Job that he must have done something wrong, and should repent for his sins.

In response, Job offers his challenge to God in the form of an oath. Though he sees the injustice of what has happened to him, he tries to work within the system, challenging God to point out what it is that he did to deserve such misery. Job clearly expresses anything he may have done wrong, such as not giving enough to the poor. If he is right that his sins do not deserve punishment, God must restore him. If he has lied, God must strike him. In response, God offers a fiery, poetic list of rhetorical questions, such as “Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundations?” (Job 38:4). All of these questions compare the minutia of Job, one small man in a large, large world, with God, who is has knowledge and power that so greatly exceed that of Job as to render Job’s assertions about justice moot. Some believe that herein lies the meaning of the book – what long-time HUC Cincinnati Professor Matitiahu Tsevat, who past away earlier this year, calls the “education through overwhelming,” approach - the idea is that the book teaches us how small, insignificant, and ignorant we are of the inner-workings of the world. The problem with this idea is that although it may be a satisfactory answer for Job, it is not a satisfactory answer for us, because we know the framing story. We know with absolute certainty that what happened to Job was not just because of how it fit in with the greater picture or some ultimate goal. What happened to Job was just plain wrong.

Therefore, I believe that the message of the book of Job is such: the world is not a just place. Righteous people suffer. As we get ready to begin our careers and need to face tough questions from the congregant who is sick or whose loved one is dying, we do not have to feel like it is our job to make sense of it. We can rest assured that their anger or frustration is legitimate, and we can validate them. They have done nothing wrong to deserve this pain. The Tanakh itself rejects the notion that we find in this week’s parshah, that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. We should reject it too.

Introduction

2010-05-28T10:31:00.000-04:00

Hello faithful readers. Many rabbis keep blogs in order to document divrei Torah and sermons that they give, as well as to post articles and random musings on topics related to Judaism and Israel in our times. I thought as part of my vocational training and in the vain hope that somebody other than my mother is interested in what I have to say (not that it ever stopped me from talking), that I would try my hand on the topic. I do not know how often I will update, but my guess is that it will be more frequently during the school year than it will be over the summer. My plan is to post any sort of sermon that I give publicly, whether at school or at my student congregation, as well as things I write for class or thoughts that stem from my studies that I think may be of interest. I also hope that I can learn a bit from the readers of this blog. I hope to not be like one of the rabbis in the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man, which depicts rabbis as being totally out of touch with reality and people's lives. As a result, I really would appreciate comments, criticisms, arguments, outrages, and feedback of all sorts. The comment forum on the blog is one great place for it, but for a more private reaction I can be reached at hermanjoshuad@gmail.com. I also know that if there will most likely be both Jewish and non-Jewish readers of this blog, and readers of varying backgrounds and levels of Jewish literacy. As a result, I will try to translate any Hebrew and provide any background information I can, but feel free to contact me with clarifications or corrections. I'll begin the post with a d'var Torah (word of Torah) that I gave at school this past month. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading my blog!